#492 Brian Eno and John Cale - Wrong Way Up

I’ve been sitting on this for a while now; I think some Eno-ey detail inspired me to hear more of his stuff.

I really want to like Brian Eno. At his best, he has an uncanny touch for detail and texture: Here Come the Warm Jets' title track is a masterpiece of fuzz and buzz and Music For Airports 1.1 is one of the greatest ambient tracks of all time. But I can’t say that I generally actually like his stuff as much as I feel like I want to: there’s something soulless about his pop and instrumental tracks, both.

I’m reminded of the immortal Adventure Time episode What Was Missing, when Princess Bubblegum instructs Finn, Marceline and Jake to play according to an esoteric series of rules in hopes of creating the song that will open the door lord’s gateway. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t work.

I'm sure you know the one.

This album is generally more on the pop side of the Eno spectrum, full of beats both world musical and Casiotoned, full of synthy bendiness, full of little swingy pieces of flair. It all feels like striking out against convention, as doing something new to something that didn’t need the newness, like Peter Gabriel’s later solo stuff, which was similarly world-influenced and left me similarly cold.

Maybe I forget how shitty pop music was back then, and therefore fail to realize how much better this is, but there’s just no resonance here. It doesn’t feel like music made with heart, but cobbled together as an experiment in good song making. There’s some subtle moments of good, full production (the bass on Empty Frame), and Cordoba is haunting and mysterious, and The River reminds me favorably of U2’s lost masterpiece The Wanderer, but across the board, it's all quavers and quixillidian modes and all for what. The proof of the music is in the listening, and there’s not much here to actually hear 2.5/5

You might like this if: you like mildly experimental pop music that at once takes chances and plays it deadly safe