Brian Eno: Nerve Net/My Squelchy Life

In the 1990s, Brian Eno was at the height of his estimable prolific powers, and Nerve Net and My Squelchy Life are – inarguably, for Eno devotees – two of his most intriguing albums.

Nerve Net (1992) steered clear of Eno's ambient signatures, focusing instead on mostly broody jazz- influenced and rock-oriented compositions. As part of his label's series of reissues, it is 1991's My Squelchy Life that will drag in Eno's less fanatical followers.

This "lost" album (it was completed, promotional copies sent out, then withdrawn) was pitched as Eno's return to the vocal-pop oddities of his 1970s solo albums, Here Come the Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy).

There’s the rub: while it doesn’t match the grand, oblique pop of those two sublime records, it nonetheless punches far above its weight.

[ brian-eno.net ]