POLL: Best Track on Eno & Cale's "Wrong Way Up"

My favorite Eno album. I could listen to "One Word" and "Empty Frame" on loop all day.

o bugger! cannot pick just 1, nohow. i love nearly all o'them.

And there, as the world rolls round
In the stars, in the stars
I draw, but the lines move round
In the stars, in the stars

One of the greatest pieces of music ever put on record.

Sugar Ray did a far-from-embarrassing cover of "Spinning Away" for The Beach soundtrack.

yep, they did. it was the only sugar ray song i knew at the time - ehich got me thinking that their other stuff might be equally decent :)

I had no idea "Spinning Away" was a Eno-track! But I remember really liking the Sugar Ray version, like a "guilty pleasure". Feels good to know I had cred all along.

A friend played me this in his car recently. That plus this poll plus the raving review on AMG forces me to buy this album.

I wrote a little something a while ago

I truly love this album.

Oh, and "Spinning Away" is the jam for me.

Worst album cover art ever, though.

"Grandfather's House" is an amazing little story delivered so emotionally by Cale, I often wonder if there's a backstory.

spinning away is a great song, I can't believe sugar ray covered it, that is weird. I've always felt this album was very very underrated and I seem to remember it got very lukewarm reviews on release, not sure why. The cover art is deceptively awful, sadly.

"Cordoba", although Cale did it better on 'Fragments'

I saw Cale in concert around the Fragments of a Rainy Season era, and I recall him saying that the basic lyrics to "Cordoba" and (I think) "Grandfather's House" were taken from practice exercises out of a 'learn a foreign language' book.

Cool review, Alfred

spinning away. i find the production on this record such hard going though.

spinning away for me with lay my love close behind. this album made me such an evangelist, I was making mixtapes for friends just to put "lay my love" on the tape.

i find the production on this record such hard going though.

how's the production a problem? My God, I could listen to those whirling gears, percussive clinkety-clanks, and Arabian keyboard melodies ALLL DAY.

"Crime in the Desert" - Barrelhouse minimalism!

("Spinning Away" a close close second.)

On Sugar Ray's "Spinning Away" cover, Mark McGrath adds these call and response harmonies not in the original but honoring Eno's intentions. I know McGrath's supposed to be a rock trivia expert, but, wow, it took real digging and gumption to cover this.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I'm hearing this again now...it's weird cause it's an album I actually do know the songs on but I wouldn't have necessarily realized that until now. I used to work with a guy who played it over and over.

I'm a sucker for Eno's voice. It sounds great so far. I'm on track 4 now.

Album? More like Spinning Away and nine b-sides.

McGrath's supposed to be a rock trivia expert

he is? it is just mr. access hollywood host to me now

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

More like Spinning Away and nine b-sides.

Very superior b-sides.

I really don't get the love for Spinning Away. Feels pretty throwaway to me

Yeah, if I'd been around I would have voted for "Crime in the Desert." It never occurred to me that Spinning Away dwarfed the competition.

There was an EP that came out along with this album, but now I can't remember what the non-album songs were. I spent a lot of time looking for a copy, and I don't think there was anything earth shattering on it.

I've got that CD single - it has "Grandfather's House" and one other unique b-side, both added to the reissue.

"You Don't Miss Your Water" was the other one.

Actually all the album tracks deserved at least one vote. What a gem of an album.... I always thought Crime in the Desert could have come off Before and after Science.

I've never heard those extra songs.

I would've given love to "Been There Done That." Here's how that song developed. Eno to Cale: "Shit. I've spent the 1980s creating moonscapes. I better catch up on what's been happening in music. Hmmm. Let's see. New wave. That Tears For Fears is pretty good. The Cure too (at least when they're not too bummed out). House. Oooh - lovely piano hooks, Marshall. Gotta have those. CHR. I can make a record as bright and chirpy as the last two Scritti Polittis. Et voila! Been there. Done that. Now back to moonscaping."

I luvluvluv the production on this album – it's SO deliberately artificial and clanky. It's as if not hiring a real band freed these two master soundscapers to use everything they've learned about keyboards, MIDI technology, Fairlight programming, and sextuple-tracked vocals.

I think the other songs were on the single for One Word. You don't Miss Your water is on the reissue (which I don't have) along with another one I've never heard, "Palanquin". Looks like the reissue gives another shot at less-terrible cover art as well.

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=10:djfpxqrsld0e

(2xpost)

Just listening to this today. Man, that "You Don't Miss Your Water" cover is fantastic.

Can't believe no one voted for "Lay My Love."

I can't believe three people voted for Cordoba!

"Cordoba" is classic Cale and fairly well-known due to his outstanding solo piano version on Fragments of a Rainy Season.

<3 <3 <3

shocked that no one voted lay my love---might be my favorite

i'd still like to hear an Aeroplane cover/treatment of spinning away

'spinning away' is possibly my favorite song of all time

also, alfred's stylus review (upthread) is really good and def worth reading!

this album!!!! god

<3 <3 <3

shocked that no one voted lay my love---might be my favorite

i'd still like to hear an Aeroplane cover/treatment of spinning away
--i like to fart and i am crazy (gbx)

can I just

this record is hilarious, forgot about it for years. middle-aged dudes get funky!

im surprised spinning away won in such a landslide. even the CD sounds like it was encoded as a 128 kbps MP3, and spinning away suffers the brunt of it

I don't follow either of these comments - hilarious? Sounds like 128kbps mp3s? It sounds frickin' great, both content and quality, to my ears.

It IS funny! "I am the termite of temptation"?

i'm talking mostly about the drum sounds. the beginning of "spinning away" sounds so compressed and full of recording artifacts.

Has anyone heard the recent-ish reissue, wrt the sound of the album?

Some great stuff in this thread.

I luvluvluv the production on this album – it's SO deliberately artificial and clanky. It's as if not hiring a real band freed these two master soundscapers to use everything they've learned about keyboards, MIDI technology, Fairlight programming, and sextuple-tracked vocals.

Completely agree. I'm obsessing a bit right now over Eno's late-80s-era production style, which this is in some ways an extension of.

I always thought Crime in the Desert could have come off Before and after Science.

Totally -- it's "Backwater" sung as a duet in a saloon.

the beginning of "spinning away" sounds so compressed and full of recording artifacts.

Eno treatments, dude. Go listen to "White Mustang" off Music for Films III if you don't believe me. He was into those kind of effects at the time.

I could listen to "One Word" and "Empty Frame" on loop all day.

It's true. I've read a couple of different accounts about how "Empty Frame" developed. One (Cale's),held that Eno laid down an incredible vocal that he was embarrassed by and insisted on re-recording it. Eno's insisted that it was just in a really high register and didn't fit the album, so he re-wrote the song completely after Cale left (at one point it was called "Waterloo"). Shame virtually no outtakes of Eno's work ever leak.

I would've given love to "Been There Done That." Here's how that song developed. Eno to Cale: "Shit. I've spent the 1980s creating moonscapes. I better catch up on what's been happening in music. Hmmm. Let's see. New wave. That Tears For Fears is pretty good. The Cure too (at least when they're not too bummed out). House. Oooh - lovely piano hooks, Marshall. Gotta have those. CHR. I can make a record as bright and chirpy as the last two Scritti Polittis. Et voila! Been there. Done that. Now back to moonscaping."

A lot was made at the time of how this record hailed Eno's return to vocals, given that he hadn't really sung anything for almost 15 years prior. But in reality, from Nerve Net/My Squelchy Life to all his background (even lead) vocals in James to Another Day on Earth (to Drums Between the Bells even), he's actually done quite a bit of vocal stuff in the decades since.

There was a great piece in Option Magazine that went into amazing detail regarding what a difficult recording this was. Doesn't seem to be online, however.

I got the cassette in a reduced vin of a mall record store

I bought it at Rainbow Records down the road in Wilmington, DE. I even remember where I was when I pulled over on the way back home!

I'm glad this album has had the staying power it has; in fact it seems to have grown in reputation over the years, as it should. Easily in my top 10 Eno releases, maybe even in the top 5.

psssh. I could make a track by Spinning Away. You just need an inspiring melody, gorgeous harmonies, a string section that carves out a grander space without being syrupy, and some tropical guitar that fits with the percussion that you only notice as propulsive when you focus on it. I mean I could make three of those tracks before breakfast.

I love both these artists almost unconditionally, yet even still, this record conjures a particular sense of nostalgia in me that I’m still not sure I can fully explain. Perhaps it’s that Emo was 42 when he made this and is closing in on 80 now. Or maybe it’s because when I first heard it I knew that Eno hadn’t done any pop music under his own name in over a dozen years.

Regardless, the songs were not only a welcome change of pace for me as a listener but clearly liberating and life affirming for him. And I only wish that Eno’s original, more unhinged vocal for Empty Frame were to surface someday. Supposedly Cale was elated when it was laid down but Eno was embarrassed and angered Cale by erasing it.

Some of my favorite drum progamming.

I sort of chuckle at this even as I sort of nod in agreement. Even at the time, Eno’s use of a Korg M1 to program the drums was a bold, even dubious choice, as it gave the “rhythm beds” he programmed before Cale arrived this very industrial THWACK that almost threatened to undermine the whole thing.

And yet, particularly when combined with Robert Ahwai’s rhythm guitar (another of the record’s secret weapons) and, yes, Nell Catchpole’s Wall of Violas, the drums not only work. They’re actually quite charming and essential to the slightly homespun feel. No other record sounds like this – because no one else combines these sounds.

I can't imagine how to improve his "Empty Frame" vocal; when it goes into those doo-wop oh-oh-oh-oh-oh's over the outro it hits every one of my pleasure centers.

Eno is barely in this, but it's still a time capsule of Cale at the time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awXiIpiBp38

And just in case someone hasn't heard it, this is the Eno/Cale product of that first collaboration that set the stage for "Wrong Way Up:"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBhBhvk6q_8

The Soul of Carmen Miranda is peak "All my 'treatments' are inside the Eventide H3000 now" Eno and Cale's then-current style of writing melodies that span about 5 notes. But I like it all the same.

By way of contrast, Eno's tune and vocal on Empty Frame are almost the polar opposite -- the two moments that have always stood out to me was the octave jump to "BA-BEE, we're going 'ROUND in circles" 2'00" and "And are/Any of our signals/Coming through-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-OOOH." It's really thrilling stuff and the most full-throated (and I suspect vulnerable) singing of Eno's career.

All that said, ever since I read that interview with them both in Option (sadly never online to my knowledge), I've wished I could hear what he initially laid down. Cale clearly took Eno's erasure of that original vocal as some kind of betrayal of the spirit of their collaboration. There's some good stuff in the Sheppard book and Cale's autobiography about it all.

Poor Cale, playing second fiddle (nyuk nyuk) to Eno and Reed the same year.

Interesting! I thought it the ultimate cult item no-one bought at the time

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, July 10, 2025 6:25 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

lol I'm pretty sure I bought this the day it came out.

I bought this on cassette when it came out but best as I remember it was only to listen to "Lay My Love". I think WXRT had it in medium rotation at the time. Surprised it didn't get any votes in this poll.

Alfred, you posted about this album recently, yes? That post sent me back to this and "Empty Frame" was the stand out now. I like the description of Eno's singing there as "thrilling stuff"!

great album
would have voted 'one word'

Those harmonies!

You’ll have your trousers down in no time in the backroom …

Booming posts, Teen Idol.

This album definitely taps into the past in a way that defies nostalgia. It connects with older melodies and styles without being homage or emulation.

It has lost none of its appeal after all these years, the definition of timeless.

This has always been “Córdoba” for me, but maybe that will change next time I come back to it

he's very generous Cordoban.

This has always been “Córdoba” for me, but maybe that will change next time I come back to it

You’ll walk toward the bus.

Pretty much every track gets a turn at being favourite but that might be my answer too on average. The lyrics are gorgeous readymades

Very glad to see the love for “empty frame” too, feel like it doesn’t get talked about much despite being the title track! Have always adored it

I'm listening to this album on a train running through southern France. Ostensibly I am going to Nice to sightsee and meet up with an old friend, but really I'm going so I can sit on a train and look out at stucco walls and tile roofs while listening to John Cale and Brian Eno.

been there
done that
been there don't wanna go back

Having now listened to this album all the way to Nice and back (Nice was amazing btw, if I had truly figured out how to live I would still be there), I cannot possibly choose between Lay My Love, One Word, Empty Frame, and Spinning Away. I think there is actually something very fitting about listening to it on a train, because that's what songs like Lay My Love look like in my mind: the vocals gliding along with deceptive peacefulness over this base of frenetic propulsive motion that never stops.

There are so many moments on this album where a single line kind of floats free of the song and hits you in a way that's hard to explain. "Some kind of change/some kind of spinning away" is the one that is really getting to me right now.

yes!

For me it's "I have no idea exactly what I've drawn"

Remember this oil by Augustus John?
These are the ones I found in Rome
Very few things I keep for long
When does your plane leave for cologne?

There are so many moments on this album where a single line kind of floats free of the song and hits you in a way that's hard to explain.

“She won’t let it touch her anymore” from “one word” was always one for me

Honestly I’ve loved this album ever since they let me design the cover on the school computer

"Crime and punishment down in Tuscon" is such a great opening line

xp lol

I’ve never heard Spinning Away before and I’m halfway thru it and I heard the opening line and immed assumed it was a 1990 david byrne collab.

I envy you

That song reminds me so much of my childhood/teenage bestie that it’s forever associated with her. The poignance is amplified by having known her for so long and still relating to each other. I think the eno & cale friendship aspect of this album, but specifically that song, shines for me.

Please don’t tell me they hated each other! I don’t know tbh and I’d rather not sully my memories.

They didn't, but Eno was in a more powerful business position.

i've never heard this. thanks to this revive i think i'll listen to it for the first time on a road trip to southern utah this weekend.

i'm enjoying lily dale's travelogue entries across various threads. my partner is in northern italy right now and i watch a lot of "cab view" train rides across france, italy and switzerland on youtube. resolution is an issue and watching a video is a far cry from the real thing of course, but i do enjoy pairing certain music with them.

"Crime and punishment down in Tuscon" is such a great opening line

The concluding “crime” committed in the desert is both hilarious and uniquely them:

Crime and punishment down in Tuscon
Back to normal in the sun
Playing blackjack in the drive-in
Shooting snake-eyes in the mud
And when the moonlight came out, we were gone, long gone.
They found a body on the race-track;
No identifying signs
In his pocket was a notebook
With a number inside
And Guadalajara's just a few miles down the line.
She adored the broken-hearted
And those who showed her a bad time
They didn't care for her body
They took advantage of her mind.
So they took her ideas and they left her behind.

Please don’t tell me they hated each other! I don’t know tbh and I’d rather not sully my memories.

I don't think the recording the album was exactly stress free but then that's John Cale for you.

sextuple-tracked vocals

Never heard Eno’s “Ring of Fire” before today – that cover is clearly the jump off point for “The River”. Actually, I don't know which one came first...

Please don’t tell me they hated each other! I don’t know tbh and I’d rather not sully my memories.

Thanks for the O'Leary. Well-written, loving piece!

he used to post in the Eagles thread as col. I miss him here.

there is a reason the cover has daggers on it, they totally hated each other.

fwiw the Johnny Cash cover was a flexi disc originally, I think. no cale involvement at all, as far as I know.

Yes the O'Leary piece is fabulous. What a quote from another erstwhile ilxor, also.

Just listened to it again on a flight and suddenly remembered I used to have a giant subway promo poster of the album cover! Wonder what happened to it ...

So, apologies for the extended diversion but I sometimes wonder if Eno would have followed this record with more singing along these lines had My Squelchy Life not been delayed by his label (and ultimately shelved by Eno) in the following months.

WWU was pitched as “Brian Eno’s return to singing pop songs” — and MSL was kind of the typically Eno-y followup, with a few standouts (“The Harness,” “Under,” and “I Fall Up” which is fun) set among a bunch of nerdy vocal experiments. Even if it wasn’t always successful, the “Eno is singing again” narrative would’ve held up had it been released.

Instead, Eno pulls the record and swaps it out with Nerve Net which has some vocals and shares some tracks but all of them are heavily processed (or in the case of “Ali Click,” rapped). There are really no traditional “songs” to speak of. At that point, while Eno is no longer as allergic to singing as he had been from 1980-1990, he mostly ditches making vocal records proper for another dozen years outside of the odd track like the vocoded “A Different Kind of Blue” on the Passengers album.

But by the time he gets to Another Day on Earth in 2005, the belter Cale brought out a decade-and-a-half earlier on WWU is long gone. While the record is quite beautiful in places and probably as winsomely melancholy as Eno ever got, the vocals often feel as much like another texture, with more layered harmonies, fewer thrilling octave jumps into his higher register and less carefree scatting. The same is true of the drone-y midrange stuff he has been singing over the last decade like The Ship, the one with “There Were Bells” — Eno describes those types of vocals—closer mic’d, sung more quietly and more guttural—as kind of a function of the aging process (the one exception on The Ship is “I’m Set Free,” which was recorded ca. 1992 and sounds like it).

The biggest “proper songs” record Eno released since WWU is the Byrne/Eno record -- all sung by Byrne. The record features some exceptional Eno backing vocals (“One Fine Day” is a big fave), but I can’t help but wonder whether Eno would’ve stepped out from behind the mixing desk and taken a few leads had the record been made together in a studio instead of patched together remotely. His vocals are a bit more energized on the Eno-Hyde records, which I enjoyed. I’m sure I’m missing something, but it’s probably not a coincidence that the closest we’ve come to Brian Eno: Pop Singer over the last 35 years is when he has had a collaborator there in the studio with him, nudging him to let her rip a bit and sticking around long enough to make sure he doesn’t erase it all later.

At any rate, if he actually gets MSL into the proverbial shops, does he do more songs like “The Harness” and “Empty Frame” in the Eno catalogue? Probably not. But maybe.

Carry on.

This one was gorgeous, dunno when it was actually recorded:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9D2BJ5tv8o

That is nice, sounds recently recorded.

Gerald McBoingBoing hepped me to the bonus track on the Record Store Day issue of My Squelchy Life in 2015, Rapid Eye, which has a rather slurry and over the top croon from Eno as well as a fat slap bass leading the musical charge. I’m not sure if that proves or disproves my theory posted above but it certainly is one of his more gregarious post-WWU vocals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rWwAHQV7xI

sticking around long enough to make sure he doesn’t erase it all later.

late lol

thanks to this latest revive for finally getting me to listen to this. i popped it onto my headphones while i did yoga in my cubicle at work - it was perfect.