David Byrne and Brian Eno's kick ass new album in a million downloadable and physical formats

David Byrne and Brian Eno's new album "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today" is up this week in a wide variety of formats, ranging from a free, DRM-free stream of the whole disc to a bunch of digital delivery options (320kbps MP3, Flac, or digital+CD) and a gorgeous little "deluxe package" with bonus tracks and a package designed by Stefan Sagmeister.

Byrne is literally my favorite recording artist of all time. I own the whole canon, in multiple formats, and a quick perusal of my top-rated MP3s in my music player, Banshee, tells me that he makes up more than a quarter of my favorite music. I have never been disappointed by anything he's done, and I've just bought myself the deluxe set and I'm listening to the stream and absolutely loving it. What a great day this is shaping up to be. Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

• [Avram]

  Phikus @7, I think the full-album-stream refers to your being able to listen to the album for free, not download it. I haven’t tried it yet; I’m sitting in a coffee shop that plays pretty good music, and I didn’t bring earphones.

• [remmelt]

  #7: yes, there is! What he means is that there is a stream of some sort that plays the entire album in a flash player. Click on Order The Album, then there’s a link on the last line of the Digital Only box. “Listen to the album.”

  I didn’t notice at first either.

• [Phikus]

  SAM@24: I believe it’s meant to be “kick-ass new.” Your confusion may be for lack of a hyphen.

  HAGBARD: I’ve never met the Heads or Laurie, but Phil Di Fiore, the guy who shot the documentary of Bernie Worrell (who played with TH on that tour) passed along a demo of my band a few years ago to Tina Weymouth, Chris Franz and their kids. Later, he told me he shot some video of them listening to it and reacting to it positively. I keep hoping he might find that clip someday and send me a copy as he said he would. They interviewed me for that doc, (we opened for Bernie when they were shooting and I got to join his band on stage briefly during their set) but I ended up on the cutting-room floor (understandably, since all the other interviews were with people like Byrne, Bill Laswell, Bootsie Collins, Tina & Chris, etc. and he didn’t end up using much footage from the Austin show.) Jerry Harrison joined him for a coupla tunes here on a previous tour. Every time Bernie comes back through town, we hang out.

• [Enochrewt]

  The house in the picture (album cover?) has a 4,000 car garage.

• [Haakon IV]

  Heh. “You do not have the required minimum version of Adobe Flash®” with OS X (Leopard), Firefox 3.0.1.

  Adobe confirms that I have the latest, 9.0.124.0 (http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/about). WTF?

  (OK, works in Safari. Flash still sucks.)

• [wolfiesma]

  I love how the little suburban tableau looks like it is sitting in an ashtray…. petri dish?

• [Phikus]

  OK, cool. I’ll buy that (if you’ll forgive the pun.) =D

• [Rashkae]

  Ironic that the music is distributed in as unencumbered format as possible (cheers for that.) but you can’t buy anything from the site without Flash.

• [hohum]

  “My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts” is one of my favorite things that either Byrne or Eno has ever been involved with! And, yes, Phikus… It was a sad day when Qu’ran was dropped from the rerelease tracklist…

  Anyhow, I listened to the whole stream and just cannot get into this new album at all which is a shame ’cause I was really stoked… It has a couple of okayish tracks, but overall doesn’t seem cohesive at all, and I just don’t feel like it was top-notch work by either of them. YMMV, of course..

• [Graham Anderson]

  Just tried buying with my UK details and their site falls over by inserting USA! USA! into the address. Sigh.

• [usonia]

  Granted, neither Byrne not Eno has done MUCH wrong in their careers. But “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” really grates on my nerves. I’m not trying to be trollish, mind you – I’m looking forward to what this album sounds like, but with the slight hangup that one of their other collaborations kinda didn’t do it for me.

• [Phikus]

  HAGBARD: Yeah, I have heard that version, and other proto-versions of cuts on that album that never made release. They came out in a bootleg vinyl I used to have, and still have a cassette of around here somewhere. The woman is a lot creepier than the priest they eventually use in the final version.

  HOHUM: A good friend of mine made the same observation, but as I said I am still reserving overall judgment ’til I listen to it more. I have always been more in Eno’s court than Byrne’s, but I like Eno’s pop and melody sensibilities, and the aforementioned Cale collaboration, so we’ll see. I like it that they are working together again regardless. Too bad Eno is not touring the material with Byrne, that I have heard.

• [artbot]

  This has been up for a week already. Wonder why you didn’t run this sooner.

  In any event, it’s a nice album. There’s a few gems, a few weak entries. I have to say I loved the freebie single they pre-released more than any single song I’ve heard in a long time.

  Musically, it’s closer to Eno’s “Another Day on Earth” and the collab with Cale “Wrong Way Up”. It exhibits much of the same rediscovered pop sensibility as those disks, but w/o some of the painfully lame lyrical/vocal choices Eno made on ADoE. There are also echoes of the darker, post industrial ambi-grind he experimented with (unsuccessfully, imho) during the 90s. Byrne’s lyrics and singing really fill in Eno’s weaknesses nicely.

• [hagbard]

  Phikus

  I agree, she was creepier than the priest.

  I’ve heard Brian Eno speak twice: once at a talk with Laurie Anderson, Spike Lee, Stewart Brand, and some Aero Chairs (i.e. a GBN joint); and once with Will Wright in a discussion about Spore. In both cases, Eno was talking about generative music, which was pretty cool.

  Looking at my CD collection, I see that I still have a copy of My Life with Qu’ran on it.

  I’m excited to be seeing both David Byrne and Laurie Anderson in October

• [Phikus]

  I haven’t seen Laurie Anderson announce dates down here in Texas yet. I hope she does. I’d love to see her again. Byrne will be here in late Sept. for the Austin City Limits Fest. I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing Eno in person, but he’s always very interesting to hear in interviews etc. Always has such fresh perspectives and interesting ideas. The album he returned to with Bowie (Outside) remains the most interesting thing Bowie’s done in recent years (and that was 13 years ago!) Bowie was originally going to co-produce Devo’s first album with Eno, but never could squeeze in the time. I saw Byrne twice with the Talking Heads (Speaking in Tongues tour, which Jonathan Demme immortalized well) and once performing The Knee Plays (another Twyla Tharp dance production, with the backdrop of Robert Wilson’s paintings.) All amazing shows.

• [hagbard]

  I saw the Talking Heads during the Stop Making Sense tour, and I saw David Byrne when he was touring with a a bunch of latin musicians and dancers, around the time of Rei Momo. Oh, and he signed my copy of his book once. I would have loved to see the Knee Plays or the Catherine Wheel. I’ve seen Twyla Tharp perform once, and it was beautiful.

  I’m jealous of my friend Paul, who managed to get invited backstage at a Speaking of Music event with Laurie Anderson, and she drew all over the sleeves of his vinyl copy of United States Live, using crayons.

  Come to think of it, I’ve been backstage with Laurie once myself, at the Aid and Comfort show that she was MC’ing. They weren’t prepared for the rain, but Bobby McFerrin showed up and saved the show.

• [muteboy]

  My GF rolls her eyes every time I point out that “I love David Byrne”. I was very excited by this and the freebie single. I’ve yet to order this, but I will. The freebie did sound more like Byrne solo than Bush of Ghosts.

  #15, he did work with U2, which lost him some points in my book.

  #21, I heard him speak about the same thing back in 2006: http://petty.me.uk/wordpress/?p=8

• [quantumage]

  This is not my beautiful house!

• [h]

  Like #3, just tried buying it (from the UK) but their Flash shop thingy is bust. Very annoying.

  And hell, why should I create a password and a security question and answer if all I want to do is buy the album? Hot damn.

• [Phikus]

  I love these guys, and have really been looking forward to this album.

  Correct me if I’m wrong, however, but it doesn’t look like they offer “a free, DRM-free stream of the whole disc” as quoted above. It looks like they offer one cut for free download and the whole album download for $8.99. I’m not saying this is a bad thing; only that the post would seem to be misleading. Folks looking for an “In Rainbows” or “The Slip” type offering based on that language might be a bit disappointed. True, you get access to the full download if you buy the deluxe or hard CD editions, but I would hardly call this free. If we want to have the whole thing now, we must download it and wait until Nov 30th for the hard copy.

• [scottok]

  What, no vinyl?!
  My, how behind the times.

• [mikesum32]

  #5 quantumage

  Wow, that was good. Thread over.

• [bryanarchy]

  Bought and downloaded last week. I’m really happy to see guys like this releasing things like this.

• [Phikus]

  I have loved the ‘Bush Of Ghosts album since the day it came out. I didn’t like that fact that it lost a track when it made the transition from vinyl to CD, (for either lack of clearance from one of the samples used, or from some sort of religious protest. The track was called Qua’Ran. Does anyone recall?) but they made up for that by adding one of the out-take tracks to subsequent releases, and later in the Anniversary Edition with several more out-takes. If you find the ‘Bush Of Ghosts album grating, you are likely to like the new one.

  Now that I have heard it from downloading it today (yes, everything did happen today, except having the hard copy in my hands) I can agree with ARTBOT@4 that it has a lot more pop sensibility, and resemblance to the Cale collaboration of Eno’s than any previous collaboration by David & Brian, with the possible exception of the Talking Heads albums. I’m not saying it resembles those albums. Actually, it is probably closer to some of the songs on Naked, (which Eno didn’t have anything to do with) and Byrne’s latter day canon than anything he’s done with Eno. I knew to expect something new, but I wasn’t quite expecting this. I’m not saying I don’t like it. Much of it i can say I already do like. But I am reserving an overall opinion until I have let it sink in further with repeated listens. So far I can say that if you are expecting anything like ‘Bush of Ghosts or The Catherine Wheel, you might be disappointed, so equip yourself with the correct expectational strategy.

  (Was it so wrong to hope for a gush of boasts, or the ghost of bush’s?)

• [hagbard]

  Phikus

  Did you notice…just kidding.

  I do remember Qu’Ran. I might still have the vinyl album in storage. I also used to have a recording of an out-take of The Jezebel Spirit, with the same music, but instead of the voice of the exorcist, it had the voice of a woman talking about being able to see into the spirit world. I taped it off a radio show, so the recording quality was very poor. Plus, I don’t know where that tape is anymore.

• [sambeckwith]

  Is “ass new” an Americanism I’m unfamiliar with or are you missing a compound modifier up there?

• [ohthecolors]

  This is a great album, and more importantly it was released in a very unique way. I love that you can stream the album and share it with everyone. I also really dug the deluxe package and the Holding Pattern screensaver, which was a perfect visual match to the music.