HERE COME THE WARM JETS

Even before Brian Eno's solo career led him to the creation of multiple beloved albums that have become so core to ambient, he showed his experimental approach to music through his quirky art/glam rock material, with this pursuit of unusual and often forward thinking ideas being most clearly captured in his debut, Here Come the Warm Jets. Eno's knack for sound design is also quite apparent upon listening to this, with the fusion of glam rock and a variety of unusual atmospheres and textures making for quite an interesting listen. That said, while definitely quite interesting in a few regards, the album is also one that's quite flawed in a couple of ways that ultimately bring down the experience by quite a bit, notably the fairly unfocused, scattershot nature of the album as a whole, and Eno's vocal delivery.

The album starts off well enough with the fun Needles In the Camel's Eye, with extremely thick distortion on the guitars almost creating a wall of sound at point, complementing the almost wailing vocals of Eno, making for an intense, yet energetic and fun song. The unfortunate aspect of the album starts to rear its head in the next two tracks unfortunately, both for similar reasons, with the quirkier nature of the songs working against them and just becoming somewhat annoying. The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch has some issues from a vocal standpoint, but my main issue with it is from the seemingly useless synth solo that really just goes nowhere, really just not a particularly great song, though not too bad either. Baby's on Fire on the other hand pushes these problems up to the forefront and seemingly want it to be impossible for the listener to look past these flaws, especially with the absolutely awful, nasally vocals that end up almost sounding like a parody of other glam rock artists. The solo here is really nothing special either, just drags the song out a bit too much, which once again is a shame, since the main instrumental backing here is actually really cool, having a certain feeling of tension to it that never really goes away and creates a marvellous, almost surreal atmosphere. While on the topic of songs being too quirky for their own good and ending up annoying, Blank Frank basically does the same sort of stuff as well but without as much memorable stuff to back it up.

Of course, the peak of obnoxiousness to me comes in on Driving Me Backwards, sounding at times to almost be an extremely unusual, warped version of David Bowie's Time , but without as much charm to it. This song also feels remarkably frustrating in the way that there's so much amazing stuff to be found here once again, especially once the rhythmic hand clapping comes in to only further add to the glorious chaos, as different elements erratically weave in and out, shame that I find Eno's shrill wailing to detract from the song, despite contributing to this uneasy atmosphere. I really feel that this album is at its best when it's focusing on its softer side, with stuff like On Some Faraway Beach and the final 3 songs to be the absolute peak of this album, making far better use of the amazing textures crafted throughout to create some genuinely breathtaking moments. In particular I'm quite a fan of Dead Finks Don't talk and the title track. The former is quite interesting to me as one of the few times that I feel one of the more bizarre ideas on the album works, that being the way Eno constantly interjects during the chorus to scream "Oh no", which honestly goes a long way to make it a pretty memorable song that somehow manages to succeed where a lot of others failed. I also feel that I can't mention this song without bringing up the amazing, dissonant outro that takes things to a far darker place than anything else here, yet another incredibly interesting moment here. The title track marks another one of the best moments here, bringing in yet another song with extremely prominent distortion, this time almost bordering on shoegaze, with layers upon layers of fuzz building and establishing an an almost melancholic tone that lets the album close off in the best possible way it could, having a real sense of finality that almost rivals King Crimson's Starless (almost).

All in all, this is an album that I both think is amazing in certain respects, yet don't particularly think is anything too great when looked at as a whole. For as fascinating and often incredibly enjoyable as the instrumentation and sound design is, the vocals often bring these detailed, experimental compositions down quite harshly. Similarly, for as much as I love how forward thinking in certain respects this album was, I also can't ignore the fact that there are many points where this felt like it came out in the form of mindless, annoying quirkiness over actual great ideas (though there's definitely some of both here). All in all, I find the album to be quite flawed in some key areas that distract form its merits. Even so, I'd still recommend people who like the quirkier side of art rock to check this one out, because there's definitely a lot of interesting stuff here that's worth checking out, even though I'm personally not a fan of how a lot of it ends up being executed.

Best tracks: On Some Faraway Beach, Dead Finks Don't Talk, Here Come the Warm Jets

Weakest tracks: Baby's On Fire, Driving Me Backwards, Blank Frank.