BRIAN ENO - Another Day On Earth

Approaching the new album by living legend Brian Eno for the first time risks a major misunderstanding, given that the record in question has been announced as his new "songs" album, 27 years after "Before And After Science", the last of that revolutionary tetralogy that upended the coordinates of pop music, introducing new possibilities, new sonorities, new approaches to composition, production, even to listening itself.

The misunderstanding arises if, swept up by the excitement over the news of Eno's return to song, one expects a return to the past, a about-face from thirty years of sonic experimentation devoted to the ambient music he himself invented, first theorizing it in his manifestos and then putting it into practice starting with the legendary "Discreet Music" (1975). Well, "Another Day On Earth" is anything but a return by Eno to his four "pop" albums. As adventurous and unpredictable as those were, this one is polished and antiseptic to the point of monotony. Because "Another Day On Earth" is, consistently, simply an ambient music record in pure Eno style, only sung rather than purely instrumental.

Once that's clear, one can surrender to the pleasure of a high-class listen, though one lacking jolts or particular flashes of genius. Lacking jolts, but perhaps not entirely: because listening to the track that opens the album, "This", any fan of "pop" Brian Eno will certainly feel a genuine leap of the heart: there it is, one of his typical nursery-rhyme melodies that sticks in your head and won't leave, there's that structure entirely entrusted to intuition and improbable juxtaposition, there's that irresistible cadence. With due differences from the distant past, of course. Words, sounds and melodies betray a melancholy, almost subdued Eno, as if troubled by having to express himself again with words as well as sounds.

Above all, returning to singing after so long, Eno no longer finds the vocal freshness that accompanied his records of the Seventies. He aids himself with vocoder and effects, but the tone now is that of a serious, composed professor; the young mad scientist is lost for good in the limbo of memory. It's precisely the vocoder that takes center stage on the delicate, poignant "And Then So Clear", probably the finest track on the collection. Here, especially in the closing section, it's the fans of his pioneering ambient music, of "Airports", of "Films", of "On Land", who will feel the lump in their throat.

The rest of the record, unfortunately, doesn't live up to these two gems placed at the opening: because, it must be said, it hews too closely to the master's most recent ambient work, work that was certainly not exhilarating. And over those faint, at times soporific, sonic carpets, the words and melodies leave barely a trace. "Caught Between" at least finds an atmosphere of striking suggestion and emotional grip once again, but it's a rather isolated episode amid the general torpor. The album's fortunes improve toward the end thanks to the shadowy "Bonebomb" and "Just Another Day", and above all the splendid "Under".

In the end, "Another Day On Earth" is a record that's easy enough to listen to, deserves attention and offers precious moments: but as a whole it never quite takes off and never truly draws you in. Above all, it shows how time can strip away even from the most brilliant and imaginative artist (and few are more so than Brian Eno) the desire to entertain and surprise.

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30/04/2026