The first collaboration of David Byrne and Brian Eno in nearly 30 years!
David Byrne will be touring early next year playing songs from this album
BRIAN AND DAVID: HOW & WHY
This record was born as a dinner conversation. While dining in New York with David and some other friends, I mentioned that I had accumulated a lot of music, which, despite my intentions, I had never formed into songs. David volunteered to give them a try. By and large, we stuck to our separate territories: I worked on the instrumentals, and he generally focused on the lyrics and vocals. This arrangement seemed to work well.
Upon starting this project, we quickly realized we were making something like electronic gospel, music in which singing becomes the central event, but whose sonic landscapes are atypical of such vocal-centered tracks.
I want music to be inviting, to offer the listener a place inside it. I think David responded to this with sensitivity and skill, and his natural edginess made those familiar progressions sound new to me once again.
Brian Eno
London
The foundations of some of the tracks are much like those of traditional folk, country, or gospel songs before these styles became harmonically sophisticated. Brian's chord structures were unlike anything I would have chosen myself, so I was pushed in a new direction, asked to face the unfamiliar, and this, of course, was a good thing. The challenge was more emotional than technical: to write simple, heartfelt tunes without drawing on cliché. The results, in many cases, are uplifting, hopeful, and positive, even though some lyrics describe cars exploding, war, and similarly dark scenarios.
These songs have elements of our previous work — no surprise there — but something new has emerged here as well. Where does the sanguine and heartening tone come from, particularly in these troubled times? As I hinted at above, some of my lyrics and melodies were a response to what I sensed lay buried in the music. My task was to bring forth into language what was originally non-verbal. In the end, we have made something together that neither of us could have made on our own.
DB
Hell's Kitchen, NY
tracklist:
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