On David Byrne & Brian Eno’s “Everything That Happens … “

Fact Magazine reviews the new collaboration, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today:

The suspicion grows, in fact, that Eno is a marketer without porfolio whose art lies in assimilating, synthesizing and then re-selling any era’s trends, and that what his celebrated adaptability anticipated more than anything was the ‘flexibility’ demanded of the late capitalist immaterial labourer. Eno once manufactured glam masks, No Wave grimaces and Ambient impersonality; with the Coldplay assignment and this, he’s fallen into line with this decade’s taste for ultra-conservative singer sincerity.

I’m not sure exactly what I expected out of Byrne on this record, but I do always expect (no matter what his previous project was) Eno to be astounding. I wouldn’t have discussed it this harshly, but it is a triumphant effort in … banality. Pleasant enough, and when Byrne performs at Austin City Limits with this stuff (and, assuming, a mix of older tunes) it will go over well. As a headphones listen from two of the best musicians I’ve had the pleasure of listening to in my life? Eh, kind of sad.