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Track Listings
| 1. Home |
| 2. My Big Nurse |
| 3. I Feel My Stuff |
| 4. Everything That Happens |
| 5. Life Is Long |
| 6. The River |
| 7. Strange Overtones |
| 8. Wanted for Life |
| 9. One Fine Day |
| 10. Poor Boy |
| 11. The Lighthouse |
Editorial Reviews
Review
David Byrne and Brian Eno retreated to pop's periphery years ago, but their influence is suddenly front and center. There are echoes of Byrne's old band, Talking Heads, in the avant-funk of LCD Soundsystem and other dance-rock bands, and you can hear the singer's workaday hysteria in the cadences of Arcade Fire's Win Butler and Modest Mouse's Isaac Brock. Coldplay sought producer Eno to help them make Viva la Vida, a record that recalls another album with Eno's mark, U2's The Joshua Tree. You can also hear Byrne and Eno's world-music fusions reflected in polyglot indie bands like Vampire Weekend.
With their new album, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, the pair rejoin the rock conversation as if they'd never left. The last record Byrne and Eno made together was the groundbreaking 1981 dance-rock tape collage project, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, but the duo go back further Everything recalls the three Talking Heads records that Eno produced, played on and/or wrote: 1978's More Songs About Buildings and Food, 1979's Fear of Music and 1980's Remain in Light. For those records, Eno was essentially a band member, bringing a darker, more layered and atmospheric sound to the group.
Everything sounds more like a Heads record than anything Byrne's done since the band split in 1991. A radiantly tuneful set made with sidemen, from agile, young polymath drummer Seb Rochford to Roxy Music's Phil Manzanera, the album often evokes sublime, slow-to-midtempo Heads songs like ''Heaven'' and ''This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody),'' as well as dreamy Eno songs like ''St. Elmo's Fire'' and ''I'll Come Running.'' The album was created with a fairly strict division of labor. Byrne wrote the words and sang lead. And Eno made the music, bringing an effervescent sonic gloom that adds some mystery and tension to Byrne's plainspoken lyrics qualities missing from much of Byrne's solo work. ''Poor Boy,'' for instance, sounds like a Bush of Ghosts outtake, all percolating bass bubbles, clattering percussion and spooky vocal samples. Byrne's words set a scene that would have appeared innocuous in 1981 but feels oddly menacing in 2008: ''A truck parked this morning outside the grocery store.''
Byrne has described the music as ''folk electronic gospel,'' openly wondering at the songs' uplifting tone. And Eno has credited his ongoing interest in gospel to hearing ''Surrender to His Will,'' by Reverend Maceo Woods and the Christian Tabernacle Choir, way back when he was working with Talking Heads on More Songs About Buildings and Food. But this is a secular, practical sort of gospel. The opener, ''Home,'' finds the singer longing for a nest, even if it's one with ''neighbors fighting'' and ''cameras watching.'' Beautifully harmonized by both men over a vigorous acoustic-guitar strum with a soaring Joshua Tree-style solo, it finds beauty and fleeting peace in spite of the ugliness. On ''Everything That Happens,'' Byrne coos over a morphine-drip soundscape about riding ''on a perfect freeway'' and savoring ''the sound of someone laughing,'' when suddenly he sees a car explode. ''Strange Overtones'' is wistful dance-floor nostalgia, with a groove that recalls George McCrae's 1974 hit ''Rock Your Baby.'' ''My Big Nurse'' is a gentle country tune with a narrator who's obsessed with dancing ''on this lazy afternoon'' amid fellow humans who are ''in love with war.''
Ultimately, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today is about how music heals even if it can't cure. On ''The River,'' amid clapboard-church vocal harmonies, Byrne declares, ''A change is gonna come/Like Sam Cooke sang in '63.'' Maybe it will. But what seems important here is the collective hope for it, channeled in song by a couple of old visionaries whose music should continue to inspire young bands and the rest of us. --Rolling Stone
''While Everything is firmly grounded in Eno and Byrne's previous work, their mutual commitment to musical exploration ensures the album rarely sounds like something we've heard before.'' --Billboard
With their new album, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, the pair rejoin the rock conversation as if they'd never left. The last record Byrne and Eno made together was the groundbreaking 1981 dance-rock tape collage project, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, but the duo go back further Everything recalls the three Talking Heads records that Eno produced, played on and/or wrote: 1978's More Songs About Buildings and Food, 1979's Fear of Music and 1980's Remain in Light. For those records, Eno was essentially a band member, bringing a darker, more layered and atmospheric sound to the group.
Everything sounds more like a Heads record than anything Byrne's done since the band split in 1991. A radiantly tuneful set made with sidemen, from agile, young polymath drummer Seb Rochford to Roxy Music's Phil Manzanera, the album often evokes sublime, slow-to-midtempo Heads songs like ''Heaven'' and ''This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody),'' as well as dreamy Eno songs like ''St. Elmo's Fire'' and ''I'll Come Running.'' The album was created with a fairly strict division of labor. Byrne wrote the words and sang lead. And Eno made the music, bringing an effervescent sonic gloom that adds some mystery and tension to Byrne's plainspoken lyrics qualities missing from much of Byrne's solo work. ''Poor Boy,'' for instance, sounds like a Bush of Ghosts outtake, all percolating bass bubbles, clattering percussion and spooky vocal samples. Byrne's words set a scene that would have appeared innocuous in 1981 but feels oddly menacing in 2008: ''A truck parked this morning outside the grocery store.''
Byrne has described the music as ''folk electronic gospel,'' openly wondering at the songs' uplifting tone. And Eno has credited his ongoing interest in gospel to hearing ''Surrender to His Will,'' by Reverend Maceo Woods and the Christian Tabernacle Choir, way back when he was working with Talking Heads on More Songs About Buildings and Food. But this is a secular, practical sort of gospel. The opener, ''Home,'' finds the singer longing for a nest, even if it's one with ''neighbors fighting'' and ''cameras watching.'' Beautifully harmonized by both men over a vigorous acoustic-guitar strum with a soaring Joshua Tree-style solo, it finds beauty and fleeting peace in spite of the ugliness. On ''Everything That Happens,'' Byrne coos over a morphine-drip soundscape about riding ''on a perfect freeway'' and savoring ''the sound of someone laughing,'' when suddenly he sees a car explode. ''Strange Overtones'' is wistful dance-floor nostalgia, with a groove that recalls George McCrae's 1974 hit ''Rock Your Baby.'' ''My Big Nurse'' is a gentle country tune with a narrator who's obsessed with dancing ''on this lazy afternoon'' amid fellow humans who are ''in love with war.''
Ultimately, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today is about how music heals even if it can't cure. On ''The River,'' amid clapboard-church vocal harmonies, Byrne declares, ''A change is gonna come/Like Sam Cooke sang in '63.'' Maybe it will. But what seems important here is the collective hope for it, channeled in song by a couple of old visionaries whose music should continue to inspire young bands and the rest of us. --Rolling Stone
''While Everything is firmly grounded in Eno and Byrne's previous work, their mutual commitment to musical exploration ensures the album rarely sounds like something we've heard before.'' --Billboard
Product Description
David Byrne and Brian Eno have paired up for their first record together as co-writers since the highly influential and critically acclaimed 1981 release My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Everything That Happens Will Happen Today is the culmination of a year s worth of writing, recording, and travel
between New York and London.
Everything That Happens... was conceptualized during a visit to Brian Eno s studio after the two reconnected
upon Nonesuch Records re-release of Bush of Ghosts. Byrne explains, ''I recall Brian mentioning that he
had a lot of largely instrumental tracks he d accumulated, and since, in his words, he hates writing words,
I suggested I have a go at writing some words, and tunes over a few of them, and we see what happens.''
Thus the two began exchanging vocal and instrumental tracks, and the transatlantic collaboration began.
Everything That Happens...features Byrne s lyrics and voice alongside Eno s various electronic tracks.
''When we started this work, we started to think we were making something like electronic gospel: a music where singing was the central event, but whose sonic landscapes were not the type normally associated
with that way of singing,'' says Eno. ''This thought tapped into my long love affair with gospel music, which,
curiously, was inadvertently initiated by David and the Talking Heads.''
between New York and London.
Everything That Happens... was conceptualized during a visit to Brian Eno s studio after the two reconnected
upon Nonesuch Records re-release of Bush of Ghosts. Byrne explains, ''I recall Brian mentioning that he
had a lot of largely instrumental tracks he d accumulated, and since, in his words, he hates writing words,
I suggested I have a go at writing some words, and tunes over a few of them, and we see what happens.''
Thus the two began exchanging vocal and instrumental tracks, and the transatlantic collaboration began.
Everything That Happens...features Byrne s lyrics and voice alongside Eno s various electronic tracks.
''When we started this work, we started to think we were making something like electronic gospel: a music where singing was the central event, but whose sonic landscapes were not the type normally associated
with that way of singing,'' says Eno. ''This thought tapped into my long love affair with gospel music, which,
curiously, was inadvertently initiated by David and the Talking Heads.''
Customer Reviews
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
62 of 68 people found the following review helpful
By JG
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
When David Byrne was the keynote speaker at Austin's South By Southwest Conference a couple of years ago, he did a presentation called "Record Companies, who needs them?". The point of his presentation was that this age of rampant digital file sharing presents challenges and opportunities for artists to reinvent the way they release their music, and record companies better figure out a different business model, or get left in the digital dust.
Well, as the saying goes, Mr. Byrne put his money where his mouth was, and released "Everything" digitally on his own imprint.
It's been phenomenally successful. As he predicted in his keynote address, he and Brian Eno have been putting about 80%, instead of 12 or 15% of the profits in their own pockets.
Byrne embarked on his current tour in support of the album a couple of weeks after its release. In doing so, he followed the second prong of his keynote address: After releasing the record, start making the big money on the road. Aside from undoubtedly being very lucrative, the tour has gotten nearly universal positive acclaim by critics and fans alike. I've seen two of the shows so far, and currently have tickets to a third show, if that tells you anything.
Now to the record itself. So much has been written on websites all over the internets since its digital release, that it's almost superfluous to do a review, but here it goes:
As the story goes, Eno had the basic tracks, sent them by email to Byrne, whose task was to add melodies and lyrics.... Read more ›
Well, as the saying goes, Mr. Byrne put his money where his mouth was, and released "Everything" digitally on his own imprint.
It's been phenomenally successful. As he predicted in his keynote address, he and Brian Eno have been putting about 80%, instead of 12 or 15% of the profits in their own pockets.
Byrne embarked on his current tour in support of the album a couple of weeks after its release. In doing so, he followed the second prong of his keynote address: After releasing the record, start making the big money on the road. Aside from undoubtedly being very lucrative, the tour has gotten nearly universal positive acclaim by critics and fans alike. I've seen two of the shows so far, and currently have tickets to a third show, if that tells you anything.
Now to the record itself. So much has been written on websites all over the internets since its digital release, that it's almost superfluous to do a review, but here it goes:
As the story goes, Eno had the basic tracks, sent them by email to Byrne, whose task was to add melodies and lyrics.... Read more ›
31 of 33 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
David Byrne. Brian Eno. Together again. 'Strange Overtones' may be the best single of the year, period. It does sound like a mishmash of leftover 90's samples, but that's because it's what it is. It even references that fact in it's own lyrics. "This groove is out of fashion/These beats are 20 years old." Still, it's incredibly catchy, charming, poppy and intelligent and against all odds, sounds very fresh.
Everyone digs Byrne and the Talking Heads, but I never counted myself as a huge fan of his music, more of a fan of his label Luaka Bop. My vanilla attitude made this record that much sweeter in that it blindsided me. The album has lots of bizarre blips and pops, weird pacing, abstract lyrics... the whole thing is very unconventional, and in this time of everyone you've ever met releasing an album online, it's very strange to find something unique. Sure, it's got hints of Byrne, hints of Eno, some XTC, TLC, FYC, a heavy (intentional) dose of modern gospel, even some Michael Jackson-ish beats... but it's greater than the sum of its parts. It's difficult to describe what you're going to hear here, but it's almost impossible to listen to the album without a smile on your face.
And I love all the artwork. The cover. The liner notes. Reminds me of The Sims meets Sunny Day Real Estate's 'Diary'. Mundane and exciting at the same time.
Everyone digs Byrne and the Talking Heads, but I never counted myself as a huge fan of his music, more of a fan of his label Luaka Bop. My vanilla attitude made this record that much sweeter in that it blindsided me. The album has lots of bizarre blips and pops, weird pacing, abstract lyrics... the whole thing is very unconventional, and in this time of everyone you've ever met releasing an album online, it's very strange to find something unique. Sure, it's got hints of Byrne, hints of Eno, some XTC, TLC, FYC, a heavy (intentional) dose of modern gospel, even some Michael Jackson-ish beats... but it's greater than the sum of its parts. It's difficult to describe what you're going to hear here, but it's almost impossible to listen to the album without a smile on your face.
And I love all the artwork. The cover. The liner notes. Reminds me of The Sims meets Sunny Day Real Estate's 'Diary'. Mundane and exciting at the same time.
23 of 24 people found the following review helpful
By Boy
Format:Audio CD
Brian Eno has a long history of assisting and inspiring other artists to create some of their greatest works (U2, Coldplay, David Bowie, James, Paul Simon, John Cale, and, of course, The Talking Heads, all spring to mind), and his collaboration with David Byrne on EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS WILL HAPPEN TODAY is no exception.
In many ways, this is the freshest sounding and most directly impacting album of David Byrne's exceptional (and exceptionally overlooked) solo career. Eno describes his musical arrangements here as simple but inviting, and this is the perfect way to put it. The music is also lush, clever, and intoxicating, and it clearly inspired Byrne to deliver some of his most soulful and appealing performances ever.
Having heard the record a half-dozen times already (and having seen a show from the celebrated concert tour), I can safely say that I consider at least 8 out of the 11 songs a perfect 5 out of 5 stars. Only the last couple songs seem to lose some steam, although they are only pale in comparison to the great tracks preceding them.
I suggest checking out the song, "Strange Overtones" (which, according to another reviewer, is available free here on Amazon), one of the major stand-outs from the album. DB opens his concerts with this song, and it's the perfect way to introduce new listeners to the distinctive soundscape of ETHWHT.
Anyways, I was pretty annoyed and disappointed to see the tangle of rotten reviews for this record, and I have to wonder why such a great artist as David Byrne attracts so many embittered spammers. This isn't to say that every bad review is a spam, but most of the bad reviews here struck me as uninformed and truly uninspired nonsense. But you can be the judge about that, I guess.... Read more ›
In many ways, this is the freshest sounding and most directly impacting album of David Byrne's exceptional (and exceptionally overlooked) solo career. Eno describes his musical arrangements here as simple but inviting, and this is the perfect way to put it. The music is also lush, clever, and intoxicating, and it clearly inspired Byrne to deliver some of his most soulful and appealing performances ever.
Having heard the record a half-dozen times already (and having seen a show from the celebrated concert tour), I can safely say that I consider at least 8 out of the 11 songs a perfect 5 out of 5 stars. Only the last couple songs seem to lose some steam, although they are only pale in comparison to the great tracks preceding them.
I suggest checking out the song, "Strange Overtones" (which, according to another reviewer, is available free here on Amazon), one of the major stand-outs from the album. DB opens his concerts with this song, and it's the perfect way to introduce new listeners to the distinctive soundscape of ETHWHT.
Anyways, I was pretty annoyed and disappointed to see the tangle of rotten reviews for this record, and I have to wonder why such a great artist as David Byrne attracts so many embittered spammers. This isn't to say that every bad review is a spam, but most of the bad reviews here struck me as uninformed and truly uninspired nonsense. But you can be the judge about that, I guess.... Read more ›
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By RHS
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
If you are expecting raucus Talking Head style rock, you'll be disappointed. If on the other hand you appreciate the complex arrangements, precision production, and beautiful lyrics fully appropriate for these trying times, you will love it.
Like many of my most favorite albums, I did not love it the first time I heard it. But I listened to it a couple times, and then it just haunted me. I wake up thinking of it.
I recently had the pleasure to see David Byrne in concert for this album tour, and it was the best show I have ever seen. Perhaps the only thing that would have been better would have been to be in the actual audience for Stop Making Sense back in the day, 1983.
Like many of my most favorite albums, I did not love it the first time I heard it. But I listened to it a couple times, and then it just haunted me. I wake up thinking of it.
I recently had the pleasure to see David Byrne in concert for this album tour, and it was the best show I have ever seen. Perhaps the only thing that would have been better would have been to be in the actual audience for Stop Making Sense back in the day, 1983.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
David Byrne/Brian Eno
This is the mellow side of a Byrne/Eno collaboration. Soothing, yet exotic sounds emanate and flow smoothly through an artistic sketchpad. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Eric Campman
1.0 out of 5 stars
90% Byrne ... 10% Eno
The result of this collaboration is a lot of David Byrne vocals. Eno is so far in the background that his influence is hard to hear; I do like Eno and I want to feel his input. Read more
Published 4 months ago by KonKal
4.0 out of 5 stars
Solid work from Byrne and Eno
Great compilation! Songs from many soundtracks can be found on this album, the two work great together. Will have to pick up additional works.
Published 6 months ago by John Minelli
1.0 out of 5 stars
what's not happenin' now
I am a long-time and devoted David Byrne, Talking Heads, and Brian Eno fan, but this is bland, unlistenable crud. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Royce P. Grubic
4.0 out of 5 stars
Open those throats and sing along...
Some music inspires head jerking, open-throated, uvula vibrating wailing. Something about how certain vocals merge like pancakes and syrup with certain rhythms, chord progressions... Read more
Published 17 months ago by ewomack
4.0 out of 5 stars
Thanks, guys
As much as I love David Byrne, I don't think that he and I have very similar tastes in music. To be honest, this is his first record since "More Songs About Buildings and Food"... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Alex Garnett
4.0 out of 5 stars
It is a Hit!!
I had never heard of this performer before. Loved the music in wall street so decided to buy this album as well. I personally like the CD.
Published on February 17, 2011 by toby
3.0 out of 5 stars
Knda Reinventing Himself
with Eno's twist of faith is what we have here. More Bowie than Eno but that's okey. A marketing devilish koda is what it is, otherwise a regular plus+some Byrne introversion of... Read more
Published on December 1, 2010 by Gerardo Martinez Casas
5.0 out of 5 stars
It's what you've been waiting for!
For those of you who have been waiting for Brian Eno and David Byrne to sing together - this is it. And they sound fantasic together! Read more
Published on July 25, 2010 by M. Hirzel
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Concert Made Me Do It
I saw David and his most excellent band and dancers at the Egg in Albany, NY. The show was one of the best of the year. Read more
Published on January 11, 2010 by John T. Mcgowan
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