 The 50 Best Albums of 2008
David Byrne has spent most of his career banging against the clear but impermeable window that separates him from normalcy; Brian Eno's spent his setting up barriers between himself (and his collaborators) and received ideas. Unsurprisingly, they make great collaborators, and their first pairing in a quarter-century is as different from their earlier ones as, say, More Songs About Buildings and Food is from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. The organizing principle, they've both noted, was to make something like a secular gospel record — simple and devotional — which they did, more or less, although their innate weirdness became part of its landscape too. (Byrne's idea of a heartwarming homily is "Home will infect whatever you do.") If Everything That Happens mostly lacks the stylish, vernacular musicianship of their best records, it's got some of the best songwriting from Byrne in a long time, partly because of the strictures Eno's placed on him, and partly because of the intimations of mortality that turn up all over the album — it's smarter about the passage of time than anything he's written since "Once in a Lifetime". — Douglas Wolk
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#41: David Byrne and Brian Eno