'Electronic gospel' is non the first genre that springs to mind when talk turns to David Byrne and Brian Eno. 'Ambient world music' or 'neurotic pop' would better describe pop's big-cat intellectuals, reunited later 27 years. As the Seventies became the Eighties, Byrne was the leader of Talking Heads, one of America's most questing bands. Eno had blazed a trail through art college, Roxy Music and experimental recordings to go the artist-producer credited with inventing ambient music. Eno produced trey Heads albums; he latterly added life to Coldplay's Viva la Vida. In 1981, Eno and Byrne collaborated on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, an experiment in non-Western rhythms and an early milestone in sampling.
Their latest collaboration seems conservative in comparability. Despite iI tracks of wilful outlandishness, much of this criminal record draws on folk ('My Big Nurse'), country (the title track), soul ('Life Is Long') and the group-singing of gospel and campfires (hence Eno and Byrne's description of the album as 'electronic gospel'). It's a shock to hear that 'Home' echoes the chorus of Simon & Garfunkel's 'Homeward Bound'. Eno has been accused of much in his time (freaking David Bowie out, propellent U2 to superstardom) as has Byrne (miking up a disused New York ferry station and rental it 'sing'), but rending off family purists is an unexpected charge.
Stranger still, this album's straightfoward songs ar far more than compelling. You come to Eno and Byrne to have your aural systems reset, but 'I Feel my Stuff' is six-and-a-half minutes of waywardness, featuring outdated breakbeats, bad rapping and a squally rock candy interlude.
Far better is 'The River', a gently clattering call in which Byrne movingly imagines an allegorical rising tide. When this record is good, Byrne could be back in Talking Heads (as on 'Wanted for Life'). When it tries too unvoiced, it sounds like 'Poor Boy', a busy, modular funk track whose rhythmic ambitions never quite gelatin with Byrne's vocals.
Ultimately, Everything That Happens... fails to unrecorded up to the expectations of a rematch betwixt two of pop's inveterate oddities. But songs like 'One Fine Day' confirm that these two old radicals ar big softies, as partial to a nice singalong as anyone else.
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