#429

Brian Eno, Another Green World

Impressions: I’m not sure why they cluster similar albums together on this list. I just reviewed Eno’s Here Comes The Warm Jets at #432. Perhaps spreading these albums further apart for variety sake would have been considerate towards idiots like myself who are listening to the entire list in order, I’m just saying. Let’s fire this one up… Seems even more experimental than Here Comes The Warm Jets, as evidenced in songs like the opener “Sky Saw” with it’s unnerving sawing guitar stabs and the floaty “Over Fire Island.” No song is longer than 4 minutes so it’s an economical experimentation. I’ve heard a good Stereolab-based cover of the catchy “St. Elmo’s Fire” before, but this version take a quantum leap with Robert Fripp’s hyperactive guitar solo. Still manages to fit some hooks in these audio landscapes. The dream-like “In Dark Trees” even sounds like a warm up for Eno’s later influence working with U2. Songs like “Another Green World” simply float in and out and soothing keyboards, buzzing guitars and only a few vocals leaves you feeling like you’ve listened to the aural equivalent of a (good) abstract landscape painting. Soothing, intriguing, Eno gets a lot of mileage out of minimal instrumentaion. This one really sunk in for me. A nice bridge between his Roxy Music pop experimentalism and his full-on ambient later works.