Pros: Really cranking up the ambience. Harmless pop nuggets buried among thick instrumentals
Cons: More of a "lay back and listen" experience than a "pump me up, Polly"
The Bottom Line: Maybe the true beginning of his descent into airy keyboard mania. Moving even further away from the goofy rock of his first two albums.
pyfr's Full Review: Another Green World by Brian Eno
Brian Eno isn't really known for the stuff released under his own name. You're more likely to encounter him in the credits of a U2 or David Bowie album than on the Billboard Hot 100, which I think is kind of a shame. You see, Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno (I ain't even lyin', dogg- that's his real name) put out some remarkable music in the 70's, and not all of it was floaty, trippy instrumental stuff for acidheads and astronauts.
Like Before & After Science, Another Green World came out when Eno was jumping from a kooky, quirky pop musician to a writer of ambient synthy stuff. What that means is that half the album heads in the one direction, while the other heads in, well, the other. We got nearly equal parts atmosphere and poppy fluff, although Eno's idea of "pop" is still pretty far from Crowded House. Think Dr. Seuss on shrooms, with a drum machine and a Casio.
I'll be honest, since I know you wouldn't want me to lie about this: it's the atmospheric stuff that works best on here. I mean, there's nothing wrong with a proto-New Wave song that says I'll come running to tie your shoe, but when you kick out a pulsing and spooky keyboard piece with a title like In Dark Trees, you can rest assured that I'll probably lay my money on the latter.
Lots of guests stopped by to help Eno out, including King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp, Velvet Underground alumnus John Cale, and balding skin-basher Phil Collins, who really livens up the ultra-short instrumental Over Fire Island with his fancy hi-hat and/or rimshot work. For his part, Fripp kicks in a little nimble-fingered flamenco-flavored finger exercise on Golden Hours.
Critics have called this album "too avant-garde" and "hard to listen to", but I think they're a bunch of buttholes in need of real employment. The man just felt like moving on, and if that meant scaring us half to death with Spirits Drifting or trying to woo us into the sack with the beautiful Becalmed, then at least he was taking chances. The same cannot be said about lots of others who were wearing out the airwaves back in 1975 with their stunning lack of imagination.
Bowie and Eno went into the studio about a year after this album came out to begin work on Low, the first of their many collaborations. Green World is kind of a prelude to those experimental efforts, although Eno's vocals are friendlier, less expressive, and therefore duller than David could ever hope to be. As always, Brian's lyrics just sound like a mouthful of whatever happened to work with the music, so don't go trying to match him up next to Bono or anything.
Favorites would have to include the exotic and nocturnal Sombre Reptiles, the bouncey, almost too-friendly St. Elmo's Fire (please do not mistake this for that John Parr soundtrack song of the same name), and the beautiful marriage of psychedelic synthesizers and aimless piano noodling that we all know as Little Fishes. Nothing is really terrible, even if the lightness of Eno's singing and keyboard playing might lull one into sleep. The title track, by the way, is apparently the theme song of some TV show in Britain called "Arena".
I wouldn't want you to buy this, hate it, and get mad at me for recommending it. If you like mostly instrumental music (less than half a dozen feature vocals here) that wavers somewhere between trippy, eerie, sad, and silly, then perhaps you ought to consider Another Green World. If you like really fast double bass beats with atrocious vocals or gangstas kicking out rhymes about raping old ladies in parking lots, then I'd suggest you go with another album entirely.
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