The album, if you've never heard it, is simply superb. For almost exactly 42 minutes, you enter a surreal, sarcastic world of babies that are on fire, blowtorches, menacing out-of-tune piano, and vague references to urination. It struck me as great fun. I instantly loved the record. After hearing Warm Jets, I went out and got Eno's 3 other rock albums: Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), Another Green World, and Before and After Science. I entered an alternate Eno-verse. I instantly took a great liking to all three other albums, while only Another Green World came close to enthralling me like Warm Jets.
It starts out with the loud, shoegaze-y guitar of Needles in the Camel's Eye, a song which Eno insists has no lyrical meaning. He's said numerous times that his lyrics don't focus too heavily on telling a story, they focus on creating a stream of words that flow well together. The second song on the album, The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch, opens with Eno in a silly accent proclaiming "My my my, we're treating each other just like strangers/I can't ignore the signifcance of these changes." It is certainly one of the weirder songs on the album.
Track 3 is the epic Baby's On Fire. It seems to be about a weird photoshoot involving a burning baby. It features a spectacular guitar solo by Eno's longtime collaborator Robert Fripp, which covers the majority of the song. Track 4 is probably the most straightfoward song on the album. Cindy Tells Me has a bit of an old-time rock and roll vibe with falsetto backing vocals and piano throughout the track. On the other end of the spectrum, Driving Me Backwards is probably the weirdest track on the album. It features doubled vocals, detuned piano, and ominous lyrics.
The next track is probably my least favorite on the album: On A Faraway Beach. The vocals seem like an afterthought, as they don't appear until near the end of the track. Track 7 is Blank Frank, a song about "the messenger of your doom and your destruction" which features a rhythm similar to that of George Michael's "Faith." One thing I always found interesting was an effect that appears throughout the song that sounds as if somebody is messing with the playback on the vocals. The track after Blank Frank is Dead Finks Don't Talk which is another strange song. This song doesn't have much singing in it, it is mostly spoken-word.
Now we being reaching the end of the album with my favorite song on it, Some Of Them Are Old. It is a hymn-like song with elaborate vocal harmonies, jangly guitar, and accordion. The song ends and you hear the sound of tense bells. Then, with the slide of a guitar, the shoegaze-y Here Come The Warm Jets kicks in. The song is a 4 minute song with the only lyrics being completely inaudible.
A great thing about the album is how it keeps building up and becoming tense, then it just releases with the epic Here Come The Warm Jets.
Here Comes The Warm Jets quickly became one of my favorite albums of all time, and I plan on discussing his other albums in the upcoming entries here.
