Indiscreet

I love Eno. I love his wonderfully precise, middle England voice, the 'irrelevant' lyrics that are a hundred times better than anyone else's, the Wildean, languorous interest in pure pleasure and surface, those seemingly atypical records where all this flips into paranoia and urban clatter ('RAF', Fear of Music, etc). Oh, and the fact he's clearly utterly filthy. A recent spell on various prescription opiates was greatly enhanced by a stack of Brian Peter George St John Baptiste de la Salle's finest works - believe me, codeine plus Discreet Music is a marvellous thing, and this sort of aid to medical recuperation is quite clearly what the record was designed for, at least according to Eno's own account, where the sound is inspired by half-heard harp music in an NHS hospital. The pretext for all of this is my review of David Shepphard's Eno biog for the New Statesman. Meanwhile, Geeta's Another Green World book promises to be somewhat more diverting than this rather rote rock bio.