Brian Eno

Eno's last vocal album strips and rebuilds pop music layer by layer, but don't take that to mean it's an experiment in tedium. It might be Eno's most rhythmically diverse album: the first half is filled with nervous tribal energy, while the last is a serene, melodic bliss-out with "By This River" taking the cake.

Before and After Science is being touted as Brian Eno's most commercial album, and with
some reason: it's a graceful, seductively melodic work, and side one even kicks off with a
neat little disco riff. But this view also confuses the issue. People who think of Eno solely in
terms of the static, artsy instrumentals on David Bowie's Heroes and Low forget, or never
knew, that on Here Come the Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)... More >

To call this album disappointing is to complain that it isn't transcendent. In fact, my objections begin only when he makes transcendence his goal: I don't like the murkiness of the quiet, largely instrumental reflections that take over side two. Dirty sound is functional in loud music, but no matter how much of a "water album" this is, the airy specificity of the Another Green World mix might save music like "Through Hollow Lands" from the appearance of aimlessness. None of which diminishes side one's oblique, charming tour of the popular rhythms of the day, from Phil Collins's discoid-fusion drumming on "No One Receiving" to the dense, deadpan raveup of (find the anagram) "King's Lead Hat." (Grade - A-)