Brian Eno / David Byrne - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

Masterfully assembled, the trailblazing duo's first work in 20 years combines Byrne's Gospel-shaded lyrics with Eno's digital beats to create an album as simultaneously inviting and foreboding as the famous house on its packaging

Few figures loom as large in the annals of pop music as Brian Eno and David Byrne. One is a mysterious trend-setter who has greatly expanded the domains of the "pop album", while the other is a gangly Scotsman who balanced experimental sounds with enduring staples of rock music. What happens when they collaborate after years apart?

Some damn good material, that's what. Everything That Happens Will Happen Today is an album that other bands are jealous of -- just as the artwork depicts a well-crafted facade, the songs here seem so slickly put together that you can't imagine them playing out any differently. If pop music works best when it distracts you from the amount of work put into creating it, then Everything That Happens... is like one of the great pyramids: no one really knows for sure how it was put together, other than the fact that it must have taken a lot of work.

The overall atmosphere will be familiar to anyone who's familiar with David Byrne's oeuvre, but this time his springy voice is dampened by a musical palette that is at once light and hopeful, yet also reflective and slightly ominous at times. According to Eno, this album was intended to resemble Gospel music and that intention can be pretty clearly heard in the strangely pseudo-spiritual lyrics of tracks like "My Big Nurse", along with the ascending chorus of the title track and the swingy, almost-funk horns in "Life is Long". The album lazily sways between these more traditional numbers and their familiar comforts and more challenging and adventurous tracks like the word-salad of "I Feel My Stuff", the primitive groove of "Wanted for Life", all the way back to 1981 with the most Eno-ish song to be found here -- "Poor Boy".

These tracks are impressively consistent and thankfully lacking in filler -- even shorter semi-interlude "The River" manages to impress with it's interesting lyrics while "Strange Overtones" is one of the best pop songs you'll ever hear. While these two weirdos keep the compositions remarkably fresh throughout, the biggest problems most will have with Everything That Happens... is the more conservative (i.e., pop) bent that the material displays, or David's voice. All things considered, though, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today is a catchy, smart, and reassuringly off-beat album that easily stands with the rest of this duo's impressive work.