ForeverandEverNoMore

Avoiding sentimentality, this quality unexpectedly turns out to be vital to the album's success. [Nov 2022, p.18]

‘FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE’ is nostalgic, melancholic, hopeful and hopeless, existentialist and nihilist. Brian Eno is one of the few artists who is able to convey the things he does by using so little, and ‘FOREVER’ is a prime example of his mastery.

Behind all the autumnal rumination and elder-statesmen tastefulness, thankfully, Eno's experimental ethos endures. [Nov 2022, p.75]

These songs feel personal, intimate and urgent.

As an album from a constantly evolving musician, one who is often as confounding as he is exploratory, Foreverandevermore is approachable in its bleak outlook. Eno captures the sound most definitive to himself, evokes his best work in the process, and manages to weave something of a concept album into the mix, which makes it one of his most fulfilling albums of the new millennium.

FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE remains an engaging, expansive and thought-provoking album.

A mournful, contemplative album. ... Eno sings slow, chantlike phrases, and his lyrics favor open vowels rather than crisp consonants. His productions — with the guitarist Leo Abrahams often credited as “post-producer” — open up vast perceived spaces in every track, as if he’s already staring into the void.

These are songs with enveloping atmospheres that dramatise their lyrics with crisping, gasping, blinding, thundering, quietly screaming sound design. [Nov 2022, p.60]

It is as timely as it is sobering and, in places, austerely, compellingly beautiful. [Nov 2022, p.90]

Ultimately, a record is never going to change the world, but FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE might finally put an end to the fallacy of Eno as the “non-musician”.

Eno’s written statement and the gravity of the subject indicate a grand departure, but FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE feels nonetheless like a continuation of his work since the mid to late 2000s.

The album is hampered by Eno’s overly didactic messaging. His pensively exhortative lyrics work fine within their specific contexts, where the songs themselves lean into the existential terror that their pessimistic worldviews provide. But on more delicate offerings, like “Icarus or Blériot” and “Sherry,” the songwriting feels counterintuitive to Eno’s elegant musicianship, becoming an obtrusive supplementary element.

One of Eno's most sobering releases, FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE is a cautious reflection on the state of our planet and its future.

As you’d expect from one of Britain’s most cerebral and celebrated sonic adventurers, this isn’t the kind of music you can hum in the bath. It’s challenging, other-worldly and thought-provoking.

‘FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE’ is never quite an album that is completely comforting or despairing. Instead, it explores the vast reaches between the two and uses introspection as a means of finding stability in the chaos.