308. Brian Eno, "Here Come the Warm Jets"

 

Brian Eno again!  I'm not much of a prog guy, and you may remember that I did not like the last Eno project on this list very much.  This one is better than that one in the sense that it has coherent songs, some of which even have verses and choruses!

The opening track, "Needles in the Camel's Eye," starts out promisingly enough, a noisy squall of guitar and god knows what else over a driving four-on-the-floor drum beat, a catchy melody.  Some of the songs, like "Cindy Tells Me," have a bit of a 50's vibe.  That song in particular is moving along just fine before Eno just has to do something crazy like insert a sound like an angry swarm of bees about halfway through.  Later, there's "On Some Faraway Beach," an actually lovely song that builds and builds.  You know what?  A lot of it vaguely reminds me of late-stage Beatles, like some of the fragments on Abbey Road.

After my last Eno-cussion, this was a mostly pleasurable experience.  I mean, say the words "experimental art rock featuring Brian Eno and Robert Fripp" to me is like saying "vodka soda" to a Trick Dog bartender, a guaranteed face of loathing and disgust, so I did not go into this with especially high hopes.  But what I found was a rather accessible, not entirely unpleasant album!  There were even stretches I enjoyed.  Maybe this was some super avant garde shit for 1974 but now it doesn't seem all that out there.

A lot of people understood the title to refer to peeing, but Eno later clarified he thought the guitar sound on the title track sounded like a "tuned jet," hence the name.  

(I was also just reminded (by emailing and asking) that the first dance at the wedding of my friends Stephen and Jessica was "I'll Come Running," a song I defamed in that last Eno post, so apologies for that.)

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Oh, I don't know, probably?