The main flaw with Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, the first collaboration between Brian Eno and David Byrne in 27 years, is its lack of a strong, controlling aesthetic. Rewind the clock three decades, back when Byrne and Eno were working on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts in L.A., and you’ll find that the opposite was true. The pair began working on Ghosts with the intention of creating music based on a made up culture. Though they eventually scaled back, the result was a stunning and innovative pastiche of rhythm, electronics, and concept.
Everything That Happens Will Happen Today doesn’t have nearly the same coherence as its distant predecessor. Eno approached Byrne a few years back, expressed dissatisfaction with a set of songs he had been working on for “up to 8 years,” and eventually asked Byrne to write lyrics and sing over the music. In other words, the collaborative starting point of Everything That Happens Will Happen Today was “salvage Eno’s botched tunes”—a far cry from the ambitious raison d’etre of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.
The results are appropriately disappointing. According to Byrne, the album was supposed to be an “electronic gospel,” a label that faintly applies to the pseudo-religious lyrics (“Big Nurse”; “The Lighthouse”) but has no bearing stylistically. Aside from a few up-tempo gems, glossy, lackluster ballads dominate the album, evoking a mood that fluctuates between bland and tart. The only exception to the rule is “Strange Overtones,” a mid-album dance number that features a killer Byrne melody and a bass riff that oozes minimalist funk. (https://www.harveymaria.com)
In short, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today is uninspired: the songs are disparate, the pace is slow, and Byrne’s voice sometimes sticks out like a sore thumb. If you haven’t heard it already, seek out My Life in the Bush of Ghosts instead and cross your fingers that the Byrne/Eno collaborations don’t stop here.
