Everything may be well be “going Jackanory” in the fairy tale world of Britpop, but out in the mid-life hinterland of Eno, Bowie Fripp and former members of Japan, it’s all still reassuringly Late Show.
Now U2, once the embodiment of tub-thumping, flag-waving, sleeveless rock, count themselves among Professor Eno’s expanding think tank. As Passengers — nice lineage, from Antoniono via Iggy Pop to Channel 4’s (English TV station) globe-surfing tidbit show of the same name — Eno and U2, five fifths of markedly unequal input, merge once again. This is the third U2 album in five years, another basket of strange fruit from the artistic Stage Two of their career, which began, ostensibly, in Berlin, back in 1991.
Firstly, be warned. If this project has a helm, Brain Eno, the housewives’ strategist, has it firmly in his hands, an evinces by sleeve notes — credited, anagramatically, to Ben O’ Rian – aligning the 14 pieces to (mostly) fictional movies: “Bottom won the 1993 Golden Horn at the Nagasaki Festival Of Light…The cast include Pi Hoo Sunn…” (P. Hewson, geddit?). Bono and co. have certainly given Eno his Head; hence Original Soundtracks 1 is steeped in outer clever-cleverness that threatens to undermine the music before it’s started. A shame, since it’s a fine, atmospheric hour-long work whose tendency toward ambient noodleage is countered by our old pals singing, guitar-playing and drums.
If the album’s least figurative movements — “Plot 180” and “One Minute Warning” — are pure studio filler, when it lifts its sights songwards, the twin hearts of boffin and band beat as one. “Your Blue Room” and “Miss Sarajevo” (both, tellingly, taken from actual films) are prime-time U2, the former a cousin of “One” and Primal Scream’s “Come Together,” the latter, with its swollen strings, the greatest Bond theme never written, in which Pavarotti takes it to the Rialto Bridge.
Essence of Japan’s Ghosts (“Ito Okashi”), the Blue Nile (“Beach Sequence”), Autobahn (“United Colours”) and Tom Waits (“Elvis Ate America,” the poem Bono contributed to Q105) keeps things fresh as Passengers toy with Sparky the Magic Piano, occasional sax, scuttling insect noises and the statutory radio dial.
Thanks to Bono’s honeyed croak, most of Original Soundtracks 1 is still recognizably U2, though come the end credits, it is Eno’s name which rolls up first. Incidentally, there’s a “regular” U2 album due for 1996. You spoil us, Mr. Ambassador…
© 1995 Q magazine. All rights reserved.