Wrong Way Up

Though Brian Eno and John Cale had been collaborating since the early '70s, their first official duet album didn’t arrive until 1990’s Wrong Way Up. This album is a summation of everything the pair had been trying to do since the start of their careers. In fact, each may have been the other’s only equal when it came to integrating avant-garde ideas with pure pop music. Fans of hallowed Eno albums like Here Come the Warm Jets and Another Green World will immediately recognize the delightfully peculiar pop-rock of “Lay My Love,” “One Word,” and “In the Backroom.” Each man plays a wide array of instruments; drumbek, omnichord, Shinto bell, and “little Nigerian organ” appear alongside more conventional implements. But for all its wild abundance of ideas, there's something about this album that's casual, even familial. Among the standouts are the African-inflected tracks “Spinning Away” and “Been There Done That” and the R&B shuffles of “Empty Frame” and “Crime in the Desert.” But the crown jewel is “The River,” the album’s sweetest and most skeletal ballad.