David Byrne/Brian Eno - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (Nonesuch)

I love this album. Many of my friends, who seem to cultivate reasonable opinions about many things, hate it. Last year’s reissue partially resurrected the debate. Is it ahead of its blah blah, or just old, in the way, avoiding putting itself gracefully out to pasture? Pay your money, take your choice. I remember falling head over heels in love with the Kathryn Wheel music, and then I needed to hear everything associated with Byrne, Eno, Talking Heads, and it all still sounds pretty good to me.

There’s something visceral about the album, something so headstrong about each sound and how it’s placed, that I find it irresistible. I still thrill to the heavy-duty gospelizations as “Help me Somebody” transforms itself from jungle-primitivism to funky R&B; the eerily mechanized voices, contrasted with the preternaturally fast ones, on “Mea Culpa” still registers some vague paranoia. I find a new layer every time I listen—well, almost every time. OK, not really; in fact, I got through all the layers years ago, but is it ever fun to hear those tin cans, pots and pans, tribal boomings, skewed percussive things …

Maybe that’s all it amounts to. I have a lot of fun listening to the album, even if the bonus cuts on this most recent reissue aren’t particularly interesting. Larger than life, like the new liners exhort? Not a bit of it. A great disc to have on while domesticating? Absolutely.

~ Marc Medwin