He’s got a name that sounds like the future. So, naturally, you expect Brian Eno to be ever changing, on the move, eyes continually fixed on the horizon. That’s why I was starting to hate Small Craft on a Milk Sea.
Released in November 2010, the project opened with a crystalline piano line, echoing across a frozen ocean of cloud on “Emerald and Lime,” before this smeared keyboard ushered in a wandering guitar in “Complex Heaven.” For fans of Brian Eno’s seminal snooze-rock triumph Ambient 1: Music For Airports, this was familiar ground. Maybe, too familiar.
There were perhaps those who celebrated the idea that Eno, after a brief, uncomfortable foray into standard musical structures (lyrics?!) on 2005’s Another Day on Earth, had returned to textured, atmospheric wierdness. But, me? Well, I was ready to decry the sad regression of a once-perpetually hip — and, when you think about it, appropriately vampiric — egghead/electro-whiz. Sure, he used to be in Roxy Music, and screws around with big-time mainstreamers like U2. But he’s still Brian Eno, right?
So, yeah, the title track, with its soft red wail, was welcome, indeed: The first indication that broader, bolder brush strokes were ahead. “Flint March” hurtled in next, boasting a polyrhythmic intensity that sounds like the first moments of a night-time air raid. “Horse” was all angles, with a sizzling electrical vibration at its center. An album that seemed caught in a nostalgic dreamscape had come fully awake.
“2 Forms of Anger” and then “Bone Jump” fused both of Brian Eno’s principal impulses together: On the first, there was an open-ended time signature and a eerie, aerodynamic wash of keyboards; on the second, a tippy-toe private-eye theme that ran right up to its shockingly quiet end. “Dust Shuffle” and “Palesonic” were these shiny pieces of dance-track debris, coupled with some deliciously crunchy effects — dirty, reverb-soaked guitar riffs, and skidding keyboard drones.
Brian Eno then descended back into the metallic contemplation of “Slow Ice, Old Moon,” and his warm jets created a radiating glow once more. “Lesser Heaven,” continues what became a seven-song ambient finale of echoing vistas — these familiar sounds heard anew in the aftermath of a flurry of activity. The album’s closer, “Invisible,” began with a rising rollercoaster’s excited squeal, before becoming surrounded by scratchy uncertainty, and then dissolving into something that sounds like a new morning.
It’s a rebirth narrative that was echoed across Small Craft on a Milk Sea. Brian Eno had come home again. But, thankfully, he was not staying for long.
- Nick DeRiso’s Best of 2015 (Rock + Pop): Death Cab for Cutie, Joe Jackson, Toto + Others - January 18, 2016
- Nick DeRiso’s Best of 2015 (Blues, Jazz + R&B): Boz Scaggs, Gavin Harrison, Alabama Shakes - January 10, 2016
- Nick DeRiso’s Best of 2015 (Reissues + Live): John Oates, Led Zeppelin, Yes, Faces + others - January 7, 2016
