ANOTHER GREEN WORLD

The third solo album from Eno shows him moving away from the quirky rock of the first two albums and hinting at his more ambient future. This is the first album he recorded where he used his 'Oblique Strategies' cards; he would randomly pick a card and follow whatever instruction was on it. Compared to the first two albums, this is more instrumental and the lyrics are generally less humourous than before. Fripp is back to play some guitar and Phil Collins brought his Brand X bandmate, bassist Percy Jones with him. Former Velvet Underground member John Cale adds some viola and keyboards.

I once read that the guitar in "Sky Saw" could slice the heavens in half. Great bass playing here. A brief vocal section. Cale does some interesting viola playing at the end. Brand X later reworked "Over Fire Island" into the title track of their album Unorthodox Behaviour. Nice mix of steady snare rim hitting, fretless bass and spacey synths. Great song but way too short. "St. Elmo's Fire" features one of Fripp's all-time best guitar solos. Nice piano parts in this song as well as overdubbed harmony vocals from Eno himself. A highlight of the album.

"The Big Ship" is a great piece of early ambient. The drum machine he uses here now sounds very wimpy and cheesy; sounds like the same drum machine the Residents were using at the same time. "I'll Come Running" sounds the most like the songs from the first two albums. Some kind of quirky ballad. Don't understand the chorus "I'll come running to tie your shoes". "Golden Hours" has vocals and is one of the better songs on the album. Nice classical/Spanish style guitar playing. Cool overdubbed Enos as back-up vocals. Not sure of the significance of "Zawinul" in "Zawinul/Lava", doesn't sound too much like something Josef would do.

The quality starts to drop off near the end. The last few songs are more ambient and mellow than most of what came before. The first half of the album is almost flawless, however. Some songs just feature Eno on keyboards and drum machines. This was a very unique sounding album for 1975. This is much more praised now than when it was first released. It was one of those albums where people did not know what to think of it at the time. I like this album, but overall I prefer his quirky rock side to his instrumental ambient stuff. I'll give this 4 stars but it really starts to get boring near the end.