Needles In the Camel's Eye - Brian Eno

Needles in the Camel's Eye - Brian Eno

3:11

Here Come the Warm Jets, 1974

Written by Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera

I wouldn't call this experimental, which is what you think of when you think of Eno.  I'd call it maybe glam pop.  Over a repeated and simple but effective major guitar riff, Eno's voice and synths blend into a hypnotic melody.  The lyrics are, as often with his collaborator David Byrne, apparently secondary and without much surface meaning.  "Why ask why? / For by the by and by / All mysteries are just more / Needles in the camel's eye."  Indeed, Wikipedia tells us, Eno has attempted to dissuade fans from reading too much into his words; he claims that the song "Needles in the Camel's Eye" was "written in less time than it takes to sing ... I regard [the song] as an instrumental with singing on it."  

Strange Overtones - David Byrne & Brian Eno

Strange Overtones - David Byrne & Brian Eno

4:16

Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, 2008

Written by David Byrne, Brian Eno, and Leo Abrahams

O listen!

Backed by a mix of instruments and electronica, Byrne croons his typical quotidian yet quirky lyrics in a soft falsetto.  It begins with waking up in the morning and hearing someone in the next apartment and then gets more abstruse.  Is it about isolation?  Hard to say.  Byrne approaches most subjects like an alien dissecting a human to see how it ticks.  "I see the music in your face / That your words cannot explain."  The electronica backing makes the song cold and aloof; I read that this collaboration was done almost entirely through email, and maybe it's missing a human warmth that Byrne famously doesn't have, and which his old band provided.  It's got a nice beat and if its intent is to make us feel removed from humanity, it succeeds.