Look Into The Eyeball

On Look Into The Eyeball, his seventh solo album, Byrne again uses his most stringent songwriting instincts to put manners on an unruly disparity of styles. As you’d expect of an arranging team that includes Greg Cohen (making his second appearance on the albums pages this issue), the playing and production standards are immaculate, encompassing Laurie Anderson-esque obliqueness (‘U.B. Jesus’, ‘Broken Things’) meticulously reconstructed Studio 54 Philly-disco (‘Neighbourhood’), and Latino rave-ups (‘Desconocido Soy’). Byrne and his band know too much about this stuff to ever let it become mere pastiche.

So much for the settings, what about the stones themselves? Well, melodically, he’s operating under the influence of old show tunes, Hollywood musicals, Tin Pan Alley standards and melodic masters like Gershwin. Which is well and good, but this reviewer must fess up – I never could stand Gershwin and I hate whimsy. But while Byrne’s worst moments betray a kind of considered quirkiness, without his arty eye you wouldn’t get tracks the calibre of the new wave/classical hybrid ‘The Accident’.

The overall impression one gets from Eyeball is of a man making music out of an honest intelligence rather than the kind of naked shivering dread that produces a Blonde On Blonde or a Closer. Or for that matter, a Fear Of Music. Still, if you ever loved his work, you’ll like this.