Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

Twenty-seven years between collaborations but Brian Eno and David Byrne don’t miss a step as 2008’s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today sounds much like what you might expect from the Eno-influenced Talking Heads era. Unlike the experiments of their 1981 collaboration My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, where the duo cut and pasted found sounds and grafted rhythm sections on top of disparate instrumentation, Everything relies on Eno pretty strictly for the music and Byrne for the lyrics and melody. This clear cut division of labor makes for relatively conventional returns, considering their avant-garde pedigrees. “Poor Boy” adds an experimental funk to the mix but a track such as “One Fine Day” best represents the tone of this album, sounding as it does like something Eno might have cooked up for U2. The opening track, “Home,” actually summons Simon and Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound” with its nostalgic toasting of “home.” “My Big Nurse” hides some disturbing images behind its suave façade, uneasy as it is with the masses calmly accepting a low grade war. Masters of subtlety, Eno and Byrne leave the devil in the details. Deciphering those details is where this game begins.