The fab team of David Byrne and Brian Eno team up for the first time after 1981’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Byrne does the rich lyrics and vocals, while Eno produced the music. Although each has a stellar reputation in their own right, the duo were behind many of the excellent Talking Heads records in the 1970s, and seem to have lost little of their verve in the intervening years.
The opening track, “Home”, gives a multi-dimensional perspective to the common term, looking at it from a distance, remembering, yet appreciating - even the negative stuff
Home- where the wheels are turning
Home- why I keep returning
Home- where my world is breaking in two
Home- with the neighbors fighting
Home- always so exciting
Home- were my parents telling the truth?
Home- such a funny feeling
Home- no-one ever speaking
Home- with our bodies touching
Home- and the cam’ras watching
Home- will infect whatever you do
The vocals are rather unemotional, as one might expect from David Byrne. This is not to say the song is unemotional or shallow. Rather, the singer lets the lyrics and orchestration create the illusion of home, without layering it with the sentimentality a lesser singer might impart.
“My Big Nurse” seems a geriatric ode to life and to the things that protect and care. The song is deathly slow, creating a languid afternoon mood. The quest is for “all the possibilities/For dancing on this lazy afternoon”. This is something one might do, interestingly enough, “When he shakes the stars above/When we lose the ones we love/When the seasons lose their grip/When the tightrope walker slips”. The security one needs for this kind of carefree, Sufi-ish dancing is derived from being “In the comfort of the world/In the arms of my big nurse.” This is perhaps a song best appreciated in the evening, or even, afternoon, of one’s mortality.
There’s a whole lotta stuff going on in “I Feel My Stuff”. This is as much a vehicle for Eno’s masterful orchestration as for Byrne’s out-there imagery, combining Lebanese Sailors with Christian crimes and fast-paced fretwork with staccato electronica notes. Let the song wash over you, give into a ‘fatafat generation’ vibe and “stuff it, step it, pick it, going bye”.
The title track “Everything That Happens” might be just a build-up to the chorus. Then again, it seems to evoke a post-9/11 vibe, from the very beginning, with the ‘neighbor’s car explode’ on a ‘perfect highway’. There is hope, asking, “Oh my brother, I still wonder, are you alright?/And among the living, we are giving, all through the night”. The signature lyrics are perfectly apt for our times, “Everything that happens will happen today/& nothing has changed, but nothing’s the same/and ev’ry tomorrow could be yesterday/& ev’rything that happens will happen today”.
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