BEFORE AND AFTER SCIENCE

I never really thought of Brian Eno as a prog musician, despite his appearance on some great prog albums, such as 801 Live, and the many notable proggers who have played on his albums. His sound has always, to me, hovered around new wave and new age. Here he does both, and quite well I might add.

The first half of the album, or side one of the vinyl, was more upbeat. Anchored primarily with some nice bass playing by the great Percy Jones, Eno writes some wonderful lyrics, which work as much for their sound qualities as they do for their meaning, aound some very good songs. But again, the sound for the most part is more new wave than prog. Probably due to Eno's association with The Talking Heads (by the way, try making an anagram of the song King's Lead Hat for some evidence of this). By far, my favorite song on this side, and the whole album, is Kurt's Rejoinder. Jones has the spotlight on this song, and he is fantastic.

The second half is not so spectacular. The songs are much lighter, often too light. Eno's ambient music has never done a thing for me, and much of this side of the album seems to come too close to that portion of his work.