PETER GABRIEL

Pete Gabe took a while to start his proper solo career after abandoning Genesis in 1974; in fact, by the time he finally got around to releasing his first solo album, Genesis had already released two albums with future bald-guy drummer Phil Collins on lead vocals. He probably spent his time absorbing a wide variety of musical styles after spending five years in a band that played nothing but epic folk-prog with baseball synthesizers, and his first solo release shows him trying out these styles while injecting some of his classic goofy Genesis personas into the mix for old time's sake. This is most apparent in a pair of songs on the first side - "Moribund The Burgermeister" is the most Genesis-reminiscent song in Pete's solo canon, shifting between slow-burning verses and an epic, stomping chorus with lots of silly theatrical voices thrown in ala "Battle Of Epping Forest," and "Excuse Me" is a giggly vaudeville-style barbershop song that surprisingly turns out to be one of the best songs on the album thanks to a really solid melody.

Everything else is a trifle more serious, but there's really no problem with that. "Humdrum" is an interestingly-arranged ballad with unexpected Spanish flavoring (you know, that cl-cl-cl-click! sound that's in Neil Young's "Eldorado") and a great bombastic ending, and the hit "Solsbury Hill" details Pete's reasons for leaving Genesis (though it's hard to tell without knowing that in the first place - "Pack your things, I've come to take you home"?) over a wonderfully chiming acoustic melody. "Slowburn" and "Modern Love" are both overcharged power rockers with great guitar hooks, something Pete was never known for during his tenure with Genesis, and the album comes to a majestic glam-rock close with the very Queen-reminiscent (News Of The World particularly) "Here Comes The Flood."

There are some problems -- the minor-key and bluesy "Waiting For The Big One" overstays its welcome for a good seven minutes (which gets kind of annoying when a song is so quiet you can barely hear it), and "Down The Dolce Vita" never really lives up to the promise of its glorious orchestral intro, stuttering rhythm guitar and all. Plus, the production is kind of crappy, but that's not really a problem unless you're one of those people who gets a kick out of listening to everything on headphones. The bottom line is that this is more fun to listen to than any given Genesis album (with the possible exception of the first disc of Lamb Lies Down), and got the Gabe-man's solo career off to a really promising start.

OVERALL RATING: 8

(Philip Maddox's review)

HIGH POINTS: Here Comes The Flood, Solsbury Hill. LOW POINTS: Waiting For The Big One.

Well, it seems that three years that Peter Gabriel had spent between his Genesis career's ending and the release of his first solo albums were simply wasted. If I were the guy as talented as Peter, I could use these three years writing the good songs, actually, not the stuff Pete wrote for his debut album: most of these numbers are just above mediocre, with only some real gems could be found. Not that Peter had run out of ideas, he had a lot of them, that's for sure, but too often, these ideas simply bore me: something like guitar rock of "Modern Love" or banal tasteless experimentation of "Down The Dolce Vita" (the booming Tchaikowsky-like orchestration on here is simply hilarious, by the way), for instance, isn't really offensive, but for a musician like Gabriel, it's simply a waste of time and record space, and nothing else.

Most of the songs here deserving to get credit in diversity, with every one being different in its' style, but do you really need to listen to the corny doo-wop of "Excuse Me" or Spanish-like "Humdrum" if it doesn't give you the sense of enjoyment? However, the only one song on here is really really really horrible - the seven-minute disaster called "Waiting For The Big One", which combines completely generic blues and awful vocal jazz. Damn, I hate vocal jazz in any kind of way (does it take any kind of intelligence to appreciate it?), and when it's Peter Gabriel, of all people, who is doing it, it sounds just abysmal. Even the cool guitar solo courtesy of Robert Fripp doesn't help too, mainly because it isn't something extraordinary and because it comes way too late in the song (around fifth or sixth minute mark, I suppose) to wake me up. A terrible one, this one is, probably the worst in Peter's entire career, counting Genesis' stuff like "The Waiting Room".

What still saves the album is two of the best songs in the man's solo catalog, big hit "Solsbury Hill" and majestic "Here Comes The Flood". The former is a quiet, almost acoustic (if not acoustic - please, pardon my ears) ballad, about leaving Genesis, as Nick has pointed out. When the sound begins to go pumping between the speakers, it sounds really cool, and the "insanity" part in the end adds something to the atmosphere, I think. "Here Comes The Flood' is even better, gorgeous, and with hard-hitting chorus that sounds as powerful as three apocalypses at the same time, and with Peter's usual great lyrics. Now these two songs are fantastic, rising miles above the other material. All in all, this album is probably for fans only, and, as far as I know, fans definitely like it: check out Ben Kramer's review of it. But I, for one, can point so much better debut albums from major artists you should get before Gabriel's debut, that it's not even funny. Shame on you, Peter, for creating such an average album.

OVERALL RATING: 5.5

Peter's debut and the first of 3 self-titled efforts (4 if you live in Britain; his fourth album was called Security in America, but was just another Peter Gabriel in Britain). After leaving Genesis, Peter took a few years off, waiting until Genesis had already released 2 albums without him before debuting. On this album, Peter's really trying to get away from the Genesis "mystical, medieval" sound, so he pulls out in as many directions as possible, from lounge jazz to blues to goofy fifties throwbacks to folk pop to new wave to big arena rock anthems, this album covers a whole lot of ground, and slams the styles together without trying to make the transition smooth, jarring the listener at the beginning of each new track. There's only one track that sounds anything like Genesis here, and it's the opening cut, "Moribund The Burgermeister", featuring Peter's voice jumping high and low and changing sounds over and over again in about 4 minutes in the best tradition of the Genesis tune "Harold The Barrel". It's great, of course - Peter knows how to write prog rock, and the tune is fantastically catchy, featuring an especially rockin' horn section.

As soon as track 2, the hit "Solsbury Hill" starts up, things get different, though. That song almost sounds like John Mellencamp, for God's sake! That's not an insult, of course - it's catchy and memorable, and the "come to take me home" part of the chorus, followed by the groovy acoustic guitar riff, is amazingly cool in a way that John Mellencamp never could get. After that, the stylistic hodgepodge really begins, with the decent hard new wave love tune of "Modern Love". The styles that he veers into here are usually pretty good at the least, with no songs really falling flat on their face. Of the remaining tunes, I like the 70's "waka jawaka" with an orchestra tune "Down The Dolce Vita" and the Queen-ish arena rock closer of "Here Comes The Flood" the most, though the aforementioned goofy fifties throwback of "Excuse Me" is certainly good for a nice laugh. The rest of the stuff is all good, but not quite amazing. It all kind of comes down to how much you like the styles he's playing. Either way, this is a very interesting, unique album.

OVERALL RATING: 8

PETER GABRIEL (II) (1978)

(Nick Karn's review)

HIGH POINTS: On The Air, D.I.Y. LOW POINTS: Exposure.

Peter Gabriel's second solo effort (produced by Robert Fripp of King Crimson fame) was clearly a transition effort between the wide-ranging musical styles of his debut and the pure psychological thrill of the following album. The sound and lyrics are certainly ambitious enough, but the overall sound of quite a few of these tracks just doesn't make that much of an impact, whether it's substandard melody, unconvincing vocals, or unmemorable song structure, I don't know. Really, a lot of this album is based on mood, but when there's not all that much noteworthy in the actual music or melodies to accentuate it, the overall effect can get rather dull. On this album, he does at least come up with some interesting approaches on occasion to keep the album from totally reaching boredom.

The best gems here, though, come right at the beginning with the classic 1-2 punch of "On The Air" and "D.I.Y.", and that's even factoring in that the performance here sounds a bit lethargic in the vocal presence and energy department as compared to the Plays Live versions. They're fantastic songs in their own right, though, as the former one has great dramatic, twinkling synths, a powerful, unexpected shift from the verse to the chorus, and an appropriate guitar solo done by Fripp midsong, making it the best here by a fairly good margin. The acoustic/piano driven "D.I.Y." has an even better hook, though, as it can be called the closest thing to a really catchy pop song out of everything else here - regardless of the buried vocals, it has great directness in its' melody and arrangement to make it effective. Very nice.

A lot of the rest of the album, however, is a bit more on the dull side, though the only song that I would call bad is "Exposure", a collaboration with Robert Fripp on the song of the same name that also appeared on a solo album of his - it has the title repeated over and over again with a boring, go nowhere bassline backing it to an irritating effect. But while other songs like "White Shadow" and "Home Sweet Home" have interesting qualities to them (the music in the former builds up quite beautifully throughout, with a nice tense atmosphere, and the lyrics on the latter are really enigmatic and disturbing regardless of how pretty the music is), the melodies on them really aren't very memorable at all. Then you have stuff like "Flotsam And Jetsam" that completely passes me by even though it's nice while it's on, and uptempo songs like "Animal Magic" and "A Wonderful Day In A One-Way World" that have charm but are a bit annoyingly dippy (though the latter certainly has a great bass groove).

These flaws aren't really annoying in the context of the listening experience, however - they just serve to keep the album short of actual greatness. Songs like "Mother Of Violence" and "Indigo" in their moving soft simplicity really epitomize this material - they're both nice, but a bit unconvincingly performed, and in the latter's case, not too memorable. Well, it's easy to understand what Gabriel was going for here - a lot of mood pieces and emphasis on lyrics (along with a really fun attempt at a horn-filled commercial pop song in "Perspective" near the end of the album) that clearly point him in the right direction in both those terms. Curiously, however, the album cover (where he looks like he's scratching something, but in a completely unnatural way, almost in a backwards position with what looks like lightning coming out of his fingers) is really a lot more intriguing than the music itself most of the time.

OVERALL RATING: 7

This is generally thought of as "the forgotten Peter Gabriel album," the one that's the hardest to find in your average retail store and the one with absolutely zero pop standards for radio programmers to plaster all over the airwaves (though apparently the plodding quasi-disco of "D.I.Y." gets airplay every once in a while). Part of the problem is that Crimsonhead Robert Fripp was enlisted as lead guitarist and producer, much to the delight of progheads the world round, and he applys his usual "band dynamic" mix-the-instruments-really-loud sound that totally suited Larks-era Crimson but doesn't work at all in a song-based context, leaving Pete's vocals buried in the mix. Another irk is that instead of relying on the individual songs to propulse the album into greatness like on the previous outing, Peter goes more for mood on several of the tracks, resulting in atmospheric numbers like "Flotsam and Jetsam," "Home Sweet Home" and the vocoder-heavy "Exposure" that might have decent lyrics (except for the latter, which consists of the title being repeated over and over again but nothing else) but the music is so featureless that it's hard to notice.

Luckily, about two-thirds of the album is dedicated to a set of killer ballads and pop songs which make the whole trip worthwhile in my oh-so-humble opinion. "White Shadow" is a synthy ballad which is like an improved take on "Humdrum"; the synths sound a bit Mannheim Steamroller-ish, but in a good way, and it's not like Pete is slaughtering "Deck The Halls" or anything. Everyone likens the opener "On The Air" to the Who, mainly because it utilizes Pete Townshend's patented "back up a driving melody with a twinkly synth" trademark and has a chorus that sounds an awful lot like "Bell Boy" from Quadrophenia, but it's a great song anyway with a really neat Fripp guitar solo. "Mother Of Violence" and "Indigo" are both incredibly effective slowish piano ballads which perhaps aren't very memorable but accomplish what they aim for, and Pete throws out two incredibly blatant attempts at late '70s crossover pop stardom with "Animal Magic" and "Perspective," yet the songs are uptempo and infectious and contrast well with the moodier pieces on the album, so I'm not enrolling in their hate club anytime soon. This is probably Pete's weakest studio album (with the possible exception of So), but it's still worth getting, and the freaky physics-defying scratching on the front cover is worth the price of admission alone.

OVERALL RATING: 7

HIGH POINTS: On The Air, D.I.Y. Indigo, Animal Magic, Mother Of Violence. LOW POINTS: Home Sweet Home

Alright, so after listening to this album for one-millionth time, I can safely say that Peter Gabriel (II a.k.a. Scratch) is definitely the same album as Peter Gabriel (I a.k.a. Car), except for the one fact: the songs are simply better. Granted, some of those numbers aren't still Earth-shattering quality ("A Wonderful Day In A One-Way World", for example, sounds like really humble and inexperienced Talking Heads crossed with Stevie Wonder), and one is even terrible ("Home Sweet Home", a ballad that is extremely cheesy musically, yet really impressive lyrically), but many of these songs are simply great! I didn't put Robert Fripp's composition "Exposure" only for one reason: it's overlong even on its' four or so minutes. Otherwise, you get a rally cool bass line in that song and weird Vocoder-driven Pete's vocals. "Indigo" is a beautiful ballad, slowly building up to its' very emotional peak. The yrics and vocal performance on here are really dark, paving the way to the material on the man's third album. "Mother Of Violence" kind of does it too, but it's more sad than dark, I suppose. Still beautifully sad, with a great use of acoustics. On the other hand, "Animal Magic" isn't dark at all - it's catchy and optimistic instead, and if you aren't hooked up by a fantastic "I'm joining the professionals:" chorus, you probably have no ear for good music.

However, the best songs on here are the duo of two opening tunes. "On The Air", which opens the record, sounds exactly like The Who songs like "Who Are You" or "Baba O'Riely" - they kind of build up and fade out with a programmed synth riff, and the main body of the song is full of memorable guitar parts, catchy melody and a great, great chorus. Don't know if Pete used The Who formula on here by accident or not, but he did an amazing work here. The following "D.I.Y." is under three minutes long, what is kind of unusual for Pete, knowing for his longer songs. Still, this song is catchy as hell and has some kind of great hidden groove somewhere there in its' sound.

It's interesting that this album usually gets bad rap fans all over the world, while critics kind of like it. It also didn't sell very well back to the days of '78, but that's maybe because it lacked a really big single, although I still don't know why something like "On The Air" didn't become a hit. All these factors caused Peter to abandon his diverse looking-for-identity style of the first two albums and move in much darker direction:

OVERALL RATING: 8

PETER GABRIEL (III) (1980)

(Nick Karn's review)

HIGH POINTS: Family Snapshot, Biko, Intruder, Games Without Frontiers, I Don't Remember, No Self Control. LOW POINTS: Lead A Normal Life.

The first two albums might have had quite a bit of interesting ideas, moods and lyrics within them, but they couldn't really have prepared the listener from what was about to come afterwards. With this particular record, Peter Gabriel really set out to create an album that would successfully manipulate mood within the powerful combination of the often creepy atmosphere and emotionally resonant lyrics and vocals. Sure, the overall production sound here might be of a streamlined 80's style, but it's very far removed from being commercially slick. While the melodies may be catchy, the actual music is quite haunting to match the ambition of the material. And of course, another really interesting feature on this album is the lack of percussion sound from drummers Phil Collins and Jerry Marotta that contributes to the sound nicely.

The sound particularly works wonders on the first half here, as all of these songs are pretty much flawless, performed in such a thrilling way to introduce the listener to such a fascinating sound. The opening "Intruder", for instance, is designed to convey a burglar sneaking through your house, with its' scary pounding drumbeat and quietly sung mood-setting lyrics like 'I know how to move quietly to creep across creaky wooden floors' - the way it all comes together with the great haunting piano line and sudden 'ahhhh' noises in between the verses creates a breathtaking experience. Then the paranoid mood of "No Self Control" sets in as a masterpiece of tension - it might present itself as engaging with its' addictive marimba and horn driven rhythm, but the lyrics (particularly the 'I don't know how to stop...' refrain) and pounding middle section very much get the essence of the title down perfectly.

After the sax-led instrumental "Start" calms down the listener briefly, you get thrusted into the point of view of some guy with amnesia in "I Don't Remember", a great rocker in which Gabriel just about pulls off a fun David Bowie imitation. Ironically, it's also probably the catchiest number of the album, too, with a simple, but fantastic guitar riff and singalong chorus. But what's not so simple to put in perspective is "Family Snapshot", an indescribably beautiful and devastating ballad to close the first half on. The whole thing is extremely well-written lyrically, told from the point of view of an assassain, with a child-like flashback at the end that brings it all full circle. The overall construction of the song is also masterful, going from an emotional piano-led beginning to a breakaway rocker (great sax breaks in there) and leading up to an emotional conclusion. It might not be the most memorable song ever written, but while it's on, it's brilliant enough for me to call it the best on the whole album.

The stretch of the last five songs is a little bit weaker, though even here there are still a couple of mighty classics. "Games Without Frontiers" is certainly one of them - lyrically, it's one of the most politically oriented tunes, focusing on a plea for unity amongst various cultures. It's a charming child-like, electronic-oriented workout, with a fun melody that's not without a certain darkness to it, great whistling throughout, and hilariously bad (but appropriate!) Kate Bush backing vocals. The closing "Biko", meanwhile, is surely one of the most incredible songs on here. It doesn't seem like much on first listen, with its' really slow and simple tribal rhythm, but that makes it all the more moving in how incredibly heartfelt it is as a beautiful dedication to murdered apartheid leader Steven Biko. The atmosphere of the whole epic really puts the listener in 'police room 619' reliving the aftermath of the scene, and the tribal chants and chorus throughout only enhance the mood, never once getting boring throughout its' entire 7 minute length.

The remaining three songs are certainly the weaker portion of the album, though they're still thoroughly listenable (just less spectacular enough for the album to fall just short of 10). "And Through The Wire" is another fine rocker with a powerful riff and charismatic vocals, with the 'I want you...' lines within the verses providing a gorgeous tone, while "Not One Of Us" has great lyrics as an outsider's anthem, though the arrangement doesn't create as great an effect as the other songs, despite a nice catchiness to it. And finally, "Lead A Normal Life" is the sole kinda dull spot on the album - it's a marimba/piano mostly instrumental tune that's OK as background music, but doesn't really do anything interesting or noteworthy. But other than those minor weaknesses, this is a totally spectacular record that probably does as much good for the landscape of the early 80's musical scene as any album out there.

OVERALL RATING: 9.5

Pete's first two albums were great and all, but their main problem was that stylistically they were pretty much hodge-podges of art-rock workouts, with little joining each track to the ones that came before or after it. He fixed that with his third self-titled album, self-titled once again because Pete was one of those pretentious folks who railed against album titles for some random reason, and featuring a picture of the Gabe-man's melting moniker on the front cover. The songs give off a consistently bleak and chilling vibe, concerned more with painting lyrical portraits than with securing a spot on Top Of The Pops, and producer Steve Lillywhite (I've said it once and I'll say it again.....Coolest. Producer. Ever.) gives the album a distinctive sound which fits Pete's vision a hell of a lot more than murkmeister noiselover Robert Fripp. The most-talked-about facet of the album is that the drum tracks (courtesy of not-yet-lame Genesis member Phil Collins) feature no cymbals whatsoever, relying entirely on the thwacking sounds of the other drums to carry the album forward; you probably wouldn't notice otherwise, but it's still a cool little tidbit.

The songs? Oh yeah, the songs. They rock like a mother, "rock" in this case meaning "rule" as opposed to "charge along with a gazillion loud guitars," since with the exception of a couple of looser crazy-catchy guitar-based numbers like "Not One Of Us" and "And Through The Wire," the songs mostly murk along to an art-rock/world beat groove, kind of similar to Talking Heads' Remain In Light but less blatant and with a more talented (but no less psychotic) singer. The two opening songs, the quietly stomping "Intruder" and the more manic but still relatively quiet "No Self Control" are probably the best examples of this style, and they're two of the most totally tubular songs you'll hear in this lifetime. The only song that regularly gets played on '80s stations is "Games Without Frontiers," easily one of the downright coolest songs ever written, with a spare funk groove, Disney-ish whistling, and Kate Bush backing vocals that sound like they're saying "She's....so POPular" but are actually saying "Jeux sans frontieres" (figure it out for yourself) - maybe I should listen to some Kate Bush, because that dunt sound like a woman providing those there backing vocals.

Normally this is where I'd stick to my pre-adhered review template and start listing flaws, but there simply aren't any, so I'll just go on listing songs that I like. "I Don't Remember" is one of the simplest songs in Pete's catalogue (next to "D.I.Y." and (shudder)"Don't Give Up") but is just all the more awesome for it, and the piano-based lyrical spotlight "Family Snapshot" sounds like some sort of grandiose warped take on Springsteen, and even though it's impossible to remember when it's not playing, it's one of Pete's best songs. The album closes with the most blatantly world-beat-influenced track, the stomping lament "Biko," and in addition to being a wonderfully-melodic (if simple) number it foreshadows the next album's sound with nearly pinpoint accuracy. No gripes anywhere in sight - this is simply a great, memorable selection of songs, and the be-all-end-all proof that Pete didn't need that band named after the first book in the Bible to thrive as a songwriter.

* OVERALL RATING: 10 *

HIGH POINTS: Family Snapshot, Biko, Games Without Frontiers, No Self Control, I Don't Remember, Intruder, And Through The Wire. LOW POINTS: None.

1980 was surely one of the darkest years in the history of music. Joy Division's frontman Ian Curtis released Closer, which still stays as the definitive description of depression in music, and committed suicide, leaving his farewell song, "Love Will Tear Us Apart"; David Byrne and Brian Eno together made Talking Heads' Remain In Light absolutely paranoid, a kind of ideal soundtrack for One Flew Over A Cuckoo's Nest; Jethro Tull spoke about Apocalypse on their poor effort A, and the then-unpretentious and young U2 told creepy stories about your childhood's end, complete with the death of your mother and your own hero, leaving you completely unable to do something in result. At the top of this, Peter Gabriel released his solo album, which is one of the darkest albums in the history of world.

This album takes the whole nature of the horror. True, some of the songs may sound happy, but, you see, none of them are happy in the lyrics or in their emotions, and that make them so special. All of the way through the record, Peter sounds so scared, sometimes in wistful kind of way, sometimes in ironic, but always scared. The most incredible thing that he wasn't really scared for his own life and for the world at that time - instead, he painted pictures of frightened people who came right to their peak of psychological fear. This is what makes his third album so special.

But, actually, Melt (as fans like to call this one) isn't all about its' spirit and emotion - it's also about music, and, oh my God, what music is it is! Most of the songs that are present on here certainly match the Peter's peak of creativity: melodies are amazing, arrangements play a huge role, and almost every song has some kind of a twist there, making the sound complete and clear. The album was also very inventive in its' time, thanks to the producer Steve Lillywhite (who is responsible for THREE great albums of 1980, by the way), probably the first one that had drum machines employed as one of the central instruments in the sound.

"Intruder" opens the show with Phil Collins' big and simply creepy drum machine riff, continues with strange noises and chaotic, unnoticeable at first, guitar lines flying through the speaker. And then there's Peter - doing an impression of a burglar, an impression of fear, an impression of darkness with simple, but effective vocal melody. "Intruder's happy in the daaaaaaaaark", - he wails later, and that strange scream gets so deep inside of the listener's soul. That's the music, people.

Isn't "No Self Control" an ultimate description of depression? "Got to pick up the phone/ I will call any number/ I will talk to anyone/ I know I'm gone too far/ Much too far I'm gone this time/ And I don't want to think what I' ve done/ I don't know how to stop/ No, I don't know how to stop." Not knowing how to stop: This is the kind of way Ian Curtis, Kurt Cobain and Elliott Smith all must have felt in their worst, lowest moments, and I definitely don't want even to experience something like that. The song does strange work - if you're going to jump out of window, or to swallow a ton of medicine pills, listen to "No Self Control" first. Then think.

"Start" is a short instrumental, with a lot of saxophone. It kind of sets the atmosphere, but I'm not a big fan of it, that's for sure. It's still short and works well as an interlude. The following number is "I Don't Remember" - an actual song, and a catchy one (check out that "I don't remember and I don't recall:" chorus for some great hooks), with a bouncy melody in fact, but with lyrics about a man suffering from amnesia. By the way, it has a really dumb video, which features Pete running from strange crazy people all dressed in totally weird white suits. Or probably not dressed at all - don't remember, actually.

"Family Snapshot" is one of my favorite songs ever. Peter took a gorgeous quiet piano melody here, and slowly built it up to the dynamic aggressive middle part, and after it reaches its' climax, he returns back to that piano theme and ends the song on a perfect note. Amazing. And, of course, lyrics, great lyrics that absolutely steal the whole show. Peter wrote them under impression of An Assassins Diary by Arthur Bremmer, who shot George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama in 1972 in the same way as Oswald killed Kennedy ("Four miles down, the cavalcade moves on/ Driving it to the sun/ If I worked it out right/ They won't see me or the gun"). He made it not because of politics, but because he was obsessed with the idea of becoming famous: "I don't really hate you/ I don't care what you do/ We were made for each other/ Me and you". Actually, Arthur was clever enough to plan the assassination right in time of evening news in America and late night news in Europe to appear there ("All you people in TV land/ I will wake up your empty shelves"). But what did lead Arthur to that obsession? Peter Gabriel explains it in the very end, with a perfect lyrical flashback during that gorgeous ending I have mentioned above: "All turned quiet - I have been here before/ The lonely boy hiding behind the front door/ Friends have all gone home/ There's a toy gun on a floor/ Come back, Mum and Dad/ You're growing apart/ You know that I'm growing up sad/ I need some attention/ I shoot into the light".

"And Through The Wire" is a lowdown after a previous song (but then again, can you name one song that can't be a lowdown after fuckin' "Family Snapshot"?), but it is still a very worthy number, with a fantastically catchy melody and great, great "Iiiiiiiiii waaaaaaant yoooooouuuu" line that drives me simply mad. And, in the very final, when Peter wistfully sings "We get so strange across the border" sounds awesome. Probably today, at the days of Internet, the theme of long distance phone love got dated, but that one particular line, especially in the context of the actual songs, perfectly explains love of two people of different nations, different countries and different cultures.

Peter continues the theme of various cultures in the next song, "Games Without Frontiers", where he asks the question via his lyrics: "Won't there be wars if we let children of ourselves and the children of our enemies play together?" The song is also the catchiest one on here, bouncy and fun, with simply ridiculous, but pretty chorus with Kate Bush on the vocals (didn't Peter had an affair with her at that time? Or were they just friends?).

And then, the album suddenly goes downhill. Two next songs aren't bad, but I 'd likely pass them when I'm, listening to them. "Not One Of Us" has a great counterpoint between quiet verses and loud, annoyingly catchy chorus, but it isn't the best song ever, obviously. But the good one. "Lead A Normal Life", on the other hand, is just boring - it starts as a simple tune, driven by piano, and goes on and goes on forever, and even the short vocal snippet doesn't do anything really interesting. It's just some filler.

However, the ending is great. Eight minutes of "Biko", a slow, but so beautiful epic, opening with African tribal chants. This vibe continues through the song with tribal feel everywhere - "Biko" was the first sign of Peter's growing interest in the world music. The melody is atmospheric, and once that combination of wild "Yihla Moja!" screams and gentle sad whispering "The man is dead: The man is dead" comes, the song leaves all doubts about its' brilliance. Lyrically, it is dedicated to Stephen Biko, the African equivalent of Martin Luther King, I guess, and Peter turned it as an ultimate anti-apartheid song. I may sound stupid is right now, but I'd take all MLK's speeches for just two lines of "Biko": "Outside world is black and white/ With only one color dead".

All in all, Melt is a ride through all kinds of fear, doubt and sadness. And it is also superb musically, with only two songs being not very good at all. For that fact, I should give it a 9.5, but, instead, I'd better give it a 10, because I am simply amazed how the guy with no special musical or psychological education managed to create the best songs on here. That's it.

* OVERALL RATING: 10 *

[email protected] (John McFerrin)

COMMENTS

[in response to the first review:]

Mostly in agreement here. I'd up the rating one point to a ten, though, for a couple of reasons.

1. The first half of this album is, for me, possibly the greatest psychological thrill-ride in the history of mass art. The ominous drum beats and squeaking floors and windows of Intruder, the sheer paranoia and fear of No Self Control, the amnesia-related anxiety of I Don't Remember, and the 'no-explanation-needed'ness of Family Snapshot floor me every single time.

2. And hey! Even though the second half isn't as directly psychologically manipulative, we have three catchy-as-hell songs, a pleasant (though not great, to be fair) instrumental, and the ultimate heart-moving protest anthem in Biko. What more could we want?

3. I also feel that Not One of Us deserves a little more credit than you've given it. Subdivisions by Rush may have beaten this musically, but as good as the lyrics were there, they pale to what I consider the most astute observation of socail elitism I've ever heard - "How can we be in if there is no outside?" An utterly FABULOUS line, simply because it is so true it hurts.

A whopping ten.

SECURITY (1982)

(Nick Karn's review)

HIGH POINTS: The Rhythm Of The Heat, Shock The Monkey, The Family And The Fishing Net, I Have The Touch. LOW POINTS: None.

The interesting and unique use of rhythms was certainly apparent on the last album, but it was only here that Gabriel decided to actually make full use of that approach, building the songs almost entirely around them. Thus, the worldbeat influence of the sound gets a bit heavier here, as does the use of drum machines and electronic elements, a potentially awful combination, but not with this guy as the driving creative force. This is also the first album of his career with an actual title (though if not for the record company's insistence it would have been another self-titled effort). As far as the quality of the music, well, the songs generally have more memorable, catchy melodies, which is not always a common occurence with Gabriel albums, and the sound is more innovative, but it ultimately lacks the last album's thrilling moods, high points and overall flow, so III wins out slightly.

Whatever the comparisons with the last album might be, though, the material here is fantastic, with the opening "The Rhythm Of The Heat" quite possibly being the best of the lot. It lives up to its' title with its' slow and eerie atmosphere that's perfect for going down a dark road, with the hypnotizing rhythm and quiet vocals that suddely rise to a great yell of 'the rhtythm has my sooooooooooooouuuull' - aspects of it that are guaranteed to grip your senses. The real treat of the song, though, comes when it suddenly breaks into a huge explosive thunderstorm of tribal drums which produces a totally stunning effect. That loud cathartic moment, though, is very much unlike the general tone of the rest of this stuff - if there's any complaint I can make about Security overall, it's that the sound is almost distractingly quiet at points, certainly not a very appropriate listen on headphones with any kind of decent noise in the background.

This is especially true of the following "San Jacinto" - the actual song itself is a powerfully atmospheric and otherworldly tune, with a great mysterious synth part repeating itself, an excellent build to the climax, and a fabulously dramatic conclusion ('hold the line... hold the line...'), but the volume is so incredibly quiet that it can be hard to notice. But that's only a minor flaw amongst this quality material - it's so much so that the next couple of tracks where the influence of the sound that most people would rather forget really comes to life. The first of them, "I Have The Touch" is an awesome pop tune with great quirky lyrics and melody and a great guitar line backing the chorus yell of 'shake those hands...' is embellished by drum machine rhythms, but in a tasteful enough fashion (another reminder of what dance music should be like). But the rhythm of that song is topped by "The Family And The Fishing Net", which makes some of the most powerful use of drum machines in rock history (along with "Mama" from the following year's Phil Collins-era Genesis album). The scary popping rhythm here is the perfect addition to this lengthy epic that pulses along nicely and makes great use of Gabriel vocals and synths.

The second side of this thing, of course, doesn't quite match up to the nearly classic first one, but it's sure got its' highs. The obvious one is, of course, "Shock The Monkey", which, in addition to being very multi-faceted lyrically and melodically, is one of the man's catchiest tunes. The keyboard line that drives the song is great, and the rhythm and vocal melody sure are addictive.  Plus, it works as an awesome crowd pleaser in concert. "Lay Your Hands On Me", though, is just the opposite - the rhythms and haunting synths of this one are really eerie due to the song's overall spare sound, the lyrics are again really, really interesting, and the verse melody is quietly fast and addictive in a subtle way. It does sound eerily similar to the Bon Jovi hit of the same name six years later in parts (mostly the tempo), and also outdoes that song's generic crowd pleasing hard rock in every way.

"Wallflower", meanwhile, is a bit weaker musically than the rest of the tracks, as the overall tone of it seems slightly bland, but the sheer emotion running through the overall prisoner-related lyrics and vocal performance more than makes up for that, and the melody is just fine, so it's still quite listenable.  And the closing "Kiss Of Life" is a nice way to close the album off on as a really fun rhythm based song with a highly entertaining keyboard part for the listener to keep up with. It's a little generic, sure, but oh so catchy. And there's pretty much your album - there's a lot of fresh sounds and approaches to be found here, and it might take a few listens to get used to, since the songs are not as immediately enjoyable as the last album, but who knows... you might find that a Peter Gabriel album with a name is as exciting as one without

OVERALL RATING: 9

Like many a good art-rocker, Ol' Pete got bit by the world-beat bug in the early '80s and decided that music wasn't actually music unless it was filled with pitta-patta echoey tribal drumming and chanted rain dance choruses, so he decided that his aim in life was to abandon his prog roots and churn out an entire album of world beat music. It was the '80s, though, and synths were the name of the game, so, not one to fall behind the times ("Excuse Me" excepted), Pete crafted what can best be described as an electronic world beat album. Sounds interesting enough to me, especially considering that by this point Genesis had released the song "Misunderstanding" and thus driven disgusted former fans into the open arms of their old pal the Gabe-man. There are only eight songs, and four of them hit the six-minute mark, but it's okay, Paul Simon's Graceland hadn't been released yet so nobody was expecting their tribal music in the form of three-minute pop songs and gimmicky Chevy Chase music videos.

Most of the music on the album is of a slow, dirge-like nature, though you wouldn't be able to tell that from the two songs that get played on the radio - "Shock The Monkey," with a misinterpreted song title that's virtually the wet dream of a really awful comedian, has one of the most unique and catchy synth hooks I've ever heard, and the clunky "I Have The Touch" is just an enjoyable little mess of thwacking beats, despite what naysayers might tell you who prefer the cleaned-up remake from later in Pete's career. Otherwise, it's slow going from that point onwards - songs like "San Jacinto" (based on an Eastern-ish synth pattern) and "The Family And The Fishing Net" take a while to grab hold of your ears, and even when they do they might still seem like overlong filler. They're really neatly-textured songs, though, and the latter has the absolute coolest drum machines that you or any other person will ever hear, and that's a fact, even though it looks like an opinion. The opener "Rhythm Of The Heat" could be the best song of all, with an intense buildup melody and a powerful Gabriel vocal performance that climaxes in an absolutely unforgettable orgasm (yes, ORGASM) of tribal drums at the song's end. It's friggin' awesome, I tells ya.

I wouldn't go so far as to rank this album among Pete's best (I'd make a Pete Best reference here, but a bastard commentator on George Starostin's site already stole that joke) - it's definitely an interesting album and the lyrics, once you make them out, are very unique and well-written, but it's a bit too dense and willfully inaccessible of an album to be a complete home run for the ex-Genesis man. Plus, the uptempo closer "Kiss Of Life," while a perfectly fun and enjoyable song, bounces by on really cheesy synthesizers that would've sounded oh-so-much-better performed by actual tribal instruments, regardless of the cost (Pete wasn't yet a marketable commodity at this point, so he couldn't afford to spend ten years to make an album ala Tom Scholz). It's still worthy of a low 9, though, and even if you find the songs too atmospheric and melody-deprived, you can still relax to the groove if not shaking your ass to that catchy monkey song.

OVERALL RATING: 9

HIGH POINTS: Wallflower, The Rhythm Of The Heat, The Family And The Fishing Net. LOW POINTS: None.

My mother's first reaction upon listening to this album was: "I bet that these songs were recorded in one takes". It definitely seems like that - the album's production is extremely limited, and most of the time consists only of keyboards and drum machines, kind of instruments a lot of New Wavers have used before Peter, so it's nothing groundbreaking on here. What's groundbreaking in Security is its' own sound - apparently, Peter was really fond of African and Latin beats at that time, so this album has that kind of drum patterns everywhere. And Peter used them with a really epic feeling - most of the songs on here last from five to seven minutes, and the shortest one is only 4:15! There are almost no short, up-to-the-point pop songs here - the album is fully occupied by long multi-part epics. Not that's necessarily a minus, mind you.

The most interesting thing is that my favorite song on the album is completely different from the rest. "Wallflower" is a simple, keyboard-driven anthemic ballad that is simply gorgeous. Add to this genius lyrics that picture the fate of poor prisoner perfectly, and you'll get a superb song. And I even don't know about whom Peter is talking on here! Actually, I forgot about the other song that definitely doesn't follow "take the beat and milk it on five minutes" formula - the single "Shock The Monkey", which takes New Wavish keyboard sound and combines it with a pop melody. People usually call this song amazing, and point it as one of the best numbers on here, and that's what I don't understand - the melody isn't THAT great and the whole song is way too long.

As for those "world music" numbers, my favorites are two really apocalyptic, catastrophic epics - "The Rhythm Of The Heat" and "The Family And The Fishing Net". By "apocalyptic" and "catastrophic" I mean that these two songs simply scare the shit out of me. No, they aren't depressing as Melt was - they take fear universally. The atmosphere is haunting, music is scary and lyrics are aggressively meaningless (well, it is possible to understand what "The Rhythm Of The Heat" is about, but "The Family"? "Light creeps through her secret tunnels/ Sucked into the open spaces/ Burning out in sudden flashes/ Draining blood from well-fed faces"?), and both of the songs absolutely kick ass. "The Rhythm Of The Heat" is better, but only by a nose, because, well, the rhythm itself is amazing. Gotta love that "Smash the radio:" part too. "The Family" is longer and lasts for good seven minutes, but manages not to bore me with the exactly same rhythm and vocal melody, because the way Peter uses quiet/loud dynamics is awesome. And it has that absolutely hilarious moment when Peter (and the back choirs) with all seriousness in his voice sings "VOWS OF SACRRIFICE!!! HEADLESS CHICKENS!!!" Cool.

Other songs aren't that noticeable. "San Jacinto" is many people's (and Pete 's) favorite, but I simply can tell you why. A long Chinese-like keyboard melody mixed with groovy Latino rhythm isn't very exciting, and that last, lethargic part is awfully boring, but in between of these, Peter gets one of his best moments - powerful, hitting "San Jacinto! I hold the line!" part. "I Have The Touch" is eh: world pop, I guess, and a catchy one, I must admit. "Kiss Of Life" is even catchier, but annoying, and I need to wait forever until that percussion breaks. Finally, "Lay Your Hands On Me" is unmemorable, although the opening rap part is great. "No more miracles, loaves and fishes - been so busy with the washing of the dishes!"

To sum everything I've said before, there's no arguing that this album is revolutionary and deep, but some songs on here are a bit flawed or just uninteresting to listen. I can't imagine a human being listening to stuff like "Lay Your Hands On Me", saying that it's the greatest song ever written and putting it on repeat for ever. However, the best material on Security is certainly some of Pete's best ever and worthy of your attention.

OVERALL RATING: 8.5

PLAYS LIVE (1983)

(Nick Karn's review)

HIGH POINTS: On The Air, Shock The Monkey, Biko, D.I.Y. LOW POINTS: None.

After the creative breakthrough with his last two albums, Peter Gabriel apparently decided the time was right to release a live set, and Plays Live (self-explanatory enough) is indeed a well-timed release. Recorded during the supporting tour for Security, this effort draws mostly from that album and III for its' material, with just two songs each from the first two albums, plus a non-album track "I Go Swimming", a great and highly catchy fast rocker with a neat rumbling riff and energetic arena friendly tempo. Of course, I'm guessing was one of those songs that probably had additional recording done on it, since it sounds more 'professionally' recorded than the other tracks here, but it's not as if it's the end of the world. But anyway, if you're one of those listeners that don't like live albums because the songs sound inferior or exactly the same as the originals, several of the songs here might not be all that thrilling, since these renditions are in many cases pretty by the book.

However, the quality of the material here is very much great all the way through, and there are enough surprises (i.e. song rearrangements and other aspects) to justify a purchase, especially if you see it cheap as I did. It helps that the Security songs here (five out of the eight) are done just fine, with "The Rhythm Of The Heat" and "San Jacinto" both being extended (though the former's ending isn't nearly as energetic as before). The latter in particular is damn near epic, with even more passion exhibited than before, and the musical essence is preserved. "I Have The Touch" is a slightly more underproduced runthrough, "The Family And The Fishing Net" utilizes live drums instead of drum machines, but still manages to sound quite menacing in this environment, and "Shock The Monkey" has a great audience participation portion that makes the already particularly vibrant performance even more so.

Meanwhile, the third album songs get rearrangements in a couple cases - "No Self Control", instead of being fast and paranoid, is slow and haunting as it's done in a sort of slowed down jazzy vibe, and while the sped up tempo on "Intruder" might be a little offputting, that's fully made up for with the even more intense vocals than before. The show closing "Biko", meanwhile, manages to sound more open and emotional in a live setting - it's simply amazing how that extremely simple rhythm can be the most captivating thing in the world over those heartfelt lyrics and vocals). The rest of the songs ("I Don't Remember", "Family Snapshot", "Not One Of Us") aren't really changed very much, but you'll probably be happy to hear them again, for obvious reasons I covered in my III review (especially the second emotional masterpiece).

The first two albums are a bit underrepresented, but what's here is great. The second album highlights "On The Air" and "D.I.Y." in particular sound phenomenal here, as they seem to have been made for a concert setting. Taken together, they're a simply glorious and anthemic paradise, and the latter is vastly improved in this case - it was still awesome in the studio, but it didn't have anywhere near as much vocal conviction as it deserved - here that's definitely not a problem. And as for the debut, "Solsbury Hill" and "Humdrum" don't really differ much from before, but I like the bass groove after every 'my heart going boom boom boom' line in the former, and the latter's climax still sounds highly powerful. So in all, a very solid concert outing, and probably one of the best live albums of the 80's in revisiting several great classics from one of its' most innovative musicians. You might want to seek out the original double CD version if you can find it, though, as the new remaster (now titled Plays Live: Highlights) omits a few songs to fit onto one disc. Still a great buy, either way.

OVERALL RATING: 8.5

HIGH POINTS: None. LOW POINTS: None.

Oh, Peter Gabriel releases the obligatory live album. Nothing really interesting here, I fear. The song selection is good (apart from fan-fave "San Jacinto" and lousy "Humdrum" - now, couldn't Pete took "Here Comes The Flood" instead, eh?), with a new song, "I Go Swimming", thrown in (which isn't really great, and would be later re-written as superior "Sledgehammer"). Other songs were all great in studio, and work well on stage. Peter doesn't really changes anything in them (except for "No Self Control", which is still inferior to the original version - the song turns from perfect desperation description to some lazy atmospherics), he just adds something in order to extend their length, but I simply don't get why I need an extended coda of "D.I.Y." or longer intro to "The Rhythm of The Heat"? Anyway, there are professional musicians (Tony Levin!) on here and all, and "The Family Snapshot" too. Fans will probably enjoy it, people who aren't familiar with Peter Gabriel will find a neat greatest hits collection and live album at once, and those geeks who like live albums because they have crowd cheering and screaming will get it too.

OVERALL RATING: 8

MUSIC FROM THE FILM "BIRDY" (1985)

(Nick Karn's review)

HIGH POINTS: Floating Dogs, Birdy's Flight. LOW POINTS: None.

During the period in which Peter Gabriel was secretly planning to record his 'sell out' effort and take over the world, he was asked to do a soundtrack for some Alan Parker Vietnam-era film called Birdy. Since the very nature of a film like that is dark, atmospheric and sort of creepy in itself, it's only natural that the music used would fit that mood. Not surprisingly, it does not incorporate the atmosphere of So for the music, but for the darker worldbeat textures of the last two albums. In fact, five of the tracks here are just rearrangements of songs from those albums, and still others were inspired by other worldbeat sources that aren't revealed by Gabriel in the liner notes (his own originals that were used, of course, are). Considering the album is all instrumental, and that a lot of the actual music isn't really that memorable, you'd figure that this would be a somewhat unnecessary afterthought in his catalog.

But what really surprises me here is how effectively the album works in spite of the unmemorability and self plagarism here. Like I noted before, the music has a distinctly dark and creepy, often ambient, quality to it, and there aren't many artists who can convey that mood more effectively than Gabriel. So even when the songs are unmemorable melodically ("Quiet And Alone", "Slow Water"), they still captivate a lot while they're on. Even when he's just mumbling faintly in the distance on the moody as hell "Dressing The Wound" and the bizarre, Easterny "Sketch Pad With Trumpet And Voice", it's pretty friggin' eerie if you ask me. Not to mention the opening two tracks "At Night" and especially "Floating Dogs" are probably the scariest and most atmospheric of the entire set, particularly the latter with its' hopeless, rising keyboard wasteland backed by clinking and shaking noises and a haunting guitar break (which makes it probably my favorite here). And "Slow Marimbas"? Basically a self-explanatory slowly building marimba-led mood piece.

Then there's the other portion of the album, the reworked III and Security tunes, but don't think this part is worthless just because they're recycled older songs. The short instrumental melody snippets of "Family Snapshot" (in "Close Up") and "Wallflower" (in "Under Lock And Key") sound nice as interludes on record and probably worked well played during particularly intimate, emotional moments in the film. The reworkings of the "San Jacinto" coda ("Powerhouse At The Foot Of The Mountain") and "The Rhythm Of The Heat" ("The Heat") are less essential, mostly because they follow the form of the originals, but how can an extended version of the latter's ending possibly be bad? "Birdy's Flight" is tremendous, though - the main four note riff to "Not One Of Us" gets repeated in a different key and becomes the springboard to a majestic and pounding tribal mini-epic. Now that's neat. Okay, this definitely shouldn't be one of your first purchases from Gabriel, and it's not quite an 8 due to the lack of originality and memorable hooks, it's not too far off either. Occasionally gripping stuff it is.

OVERALL RATING: 7.5

HIGH POINTS: Birdy's Flight. LOW POINTS: None really, but the fact he uses his own old songs for the basis of these really irritates me.

Ok, so it's Pete's soundtrack to some Alan Parker film that I haven't ever seen and have no desire to see it anyway. The soundtrack itself is rather short - 35 minutes only - and fully instrumental (well, Peter's chants are present, but they are still chants). And it has completely no point. First of all, many of these pieces are based upon the tunes from older Peter's tunes, almost all of which came from Security. "Close Up" is first 55 seconds of "Family Snapshot" with HUGE echo placed on that piano; "The Heat" is almost complete instrumental version of (three guesses what?) "The Rhythm Of The Heat"; "Under Lock And Key" is a portion from "Wallflower" (a short, sampled snippet of this track also appears in the opening "At Night"), and, finally, "Powerhouse At The Foot Of The Mountain" is the ending of "San Jacinto", extended for two minutes for no reason at all.

As for the other tracks, I can say only two words: "nothing special". All of them is some kind of a cross between ambient and world music, but none of them is really memorable, aside from amazing "Birdy's Flight", which is based on "Not One Of Us", but sounds completely unlike the said song - this instrumental simply pictures the bird's flight or whatever. "Slow Marimbas" is, eh, slow marimbas, I guess. "At Night" has a kind of nice build up, but goes nowhere, as most of the pieces on here do. Anyhow, all of these tracks work nice as background music and set really great, scary atmosphere all along. I guess I need to watch the film to understand this thing completely, it seems.

OVERALL RATING: 6.5

SO (1986)

(Nick Karn's review)

HIGH POINTS: Red Rain, Sledgehammer, Big Time. LOW POINTS: Don't Give Up.

What the heck was it about the year 1986 that made old rock stars want to turn out very subpar efforts? Stupid soulless pop songs, dated drum machines, miserable attempts to be cool, and overproduction. It figures that Peter Gabriel had the bad luck to try and actually fuse his worldbeat style with commercial pop in this year. Yeah, the hits from this one are overplayed to death, and it's also true that several songs are very normal for Gabriel standards. But hey, there are still quite a few intriguing and interesting moments throughout, and not a single song here is a complete waste from start to finish (which is more of an accomplishment than it might seem, actually), with a few of them being downright great. This guy was far too creative to have his soul sucked out by big corporate monsters, and the formula he established here was certainly solid enough to base an even greater album on, but that's for later.

The first of the highlights, and also the best one, is "Red Rain", which effectively gives the potentially bothersome production a great majesty due in no small part to the vocals, which are especially effective as the music slowly starts to die down at the end. The lyrics are quite interesting, too, and certainly help a classic pop song. The huge smash "Sledgehammer", meanwhile, is probably known a lot more for its' astounding video than its' actual musical content, but it's still a fantastic pop song anyway, with an irresistible groove going for it, and a well-constructed hook. Same goes for "Big Time", but heck, that's a really cool tune, too, with an entertainment value just as good. It's poppy, it's fun, and I really love the 'my house getting bigger...' portion at the end of the song.

Of course, the album's not all upbeat pop, as there are also the softer tracks here. One of them unfortunately, is definitely the weakest track on the album, the Kate Bush duet "Don't Give Up", but even that one has nice qualities to it, like a fabulous Tony Levin bassline in the mildly interesting verses. I don't mind Bush's vocals like some do (they're reasonaby nice), but I have to admit the lyrics are too cliched in that chorus, and it hits generic ballad territory a little too hard. The hit worldbeat influenced ballad "In Your Eyes" is somewhat better, as the melody and lyrics (particularly the build to the title's chant) are quite moving, and it's a captivating and beautiful song from start to finish. The more 'atmospheric' Security-like "Mercy Street" isn't bad either, as it has a somewhat creepy atmosphere in the lyrics and music, even if, like "Don't Give Up", it doesn't really have quite enough build to merit a 6-1/2 minute length.

Finally, to round out the album, there's the addictive rhythm of "That Voice Again", which is basically a more uptempo rewrite of "Red Rain", but I don't really mind. It has a hook all on its' own, and it's brought to a very enjoyable level by Gabriel's vocals like all the other tracks, so it's quite good. The more 'experimental' tracks right at the end are also interesting in their own ways - "We Do What We're Told (Milgram's 37)" is built on a repetitive, hypnotizing rhythm that emphasizes the chants of 'we do what we're told, told to do' in a great, effective way, and the extremely fun "This Is The Picture (Excellent Birds)" has guest vocalist Laurie Anderson trading off silly lyrics with Gabriel over an awesome groove for a thoroughly satisfying end to the album. So in all, with the exception of a couple dragging moments and slight misteps, So is a very enjoyable 'sellout' effort from start to finish. Definitely not one of his best efforts, but enough excellent material to earn its' decent sized 8 rating.

OVERALL RATING: 8

Like a lot of albums released in the oh-so-unfriendly-to-old-blood year of 1986, the Gabe-man's fifth album has the unfortunate burden to bear of being his "sellout album." It's not completely unjustified - this was, after all, a humongous commercial success, and his first album with an official title (Security dunt count because that was just the American name for Pete's fourth self-titled collection, I guess us Yanks were getting restless). Even the album cover consists merely of a simple torso shot of Pete soullessly staring at the camera in a black shirt, kind of similar to Phil Collins' stupid-ass album covers in a way, who by this point had started to suck, badly. The album's mega-success rests almost entirely on its two poppy centerpieces, the horny slow funkster "Sledgehammer" and the overhyped but still absolutely magnificent ballad "In Your Eyes," which would be a prom standard if the mainstream hadn't progressed by now to the point of only allowing samey generic R&B grooves onto the dancefloor. The tunes are pretty blatantly overplayed, but as long as you've lived under a rock for the past fifteen years you'll be fine, though in such a case you'd probably be more concerned with seeking out food and water and attempting to establish contact with other humans rather than listening to pop songs.

The rest of the album is a mixture of glossy pop songs and attempts at more experimental Security-type stuff that end up sounding glossy anyway, and the results are a trifle inconsistent. It's not that the pop songs suck and the experimental typical Gabe stuff rules or anything, the inconsistency is spread completely across-the-board so it's hard to pin the crime down to a single party. On the poppy side, there's great, memorable stuff like "Big Time," which cheerfully makes fun of rich religious hypocrites over a cluttered and heavily synthesized beat, but then you've got bilge like "Don't Give Up," which wastes an awesome Tony Levin bassline on a generic and overly-saccharine duet with Kate Bush, who sounds like [insert vacuum cleaner simile here].

On the weird side of the tracks, as great as the Laurie Anderson collaboration "This Is The Picture" is, "Mercy Street" just glides by, glutted by its own atmosphere and forgetting to deliver any sort of a particularly memorable melody in the process. The six-minute anthemic opener "Red Rain" combines the poppy with the Gabe spirit of old and winds up being the best song on the album (and a mainstay on radio stations too cool to play "Sledgehammer"), but it's not enough to save the album from being one of Dr. Gabenstein's less fulfilling recordings. It's worth it for the great songs, which comprise a distinct majority of the album, but it's just not as good as pretty much every other album he's made.

OVERALL RATING: 7

(Philip Maddox's review)

HIGH POINTS: Red Rain, Mercy Street, In Your Eyes, Big Time, Sledgehammer, This Is The Picture (Excellent Birds). LOW POINTS: None.

Peter Gabriel surely had one of the most unexpected careers in the music world. At the beginning, he was a kid in the prestigious private school singing in a local pop band, which has turned into an awesome and one of the most famous progressive rock groups in history. Then, when he was on roll of his own and his band's success, with a lot of dedicated fans forming some kind of cult around, he suddenly left. Three years after, he returned and found himself far away from prog, trying to find a new style of his own. When he did, he released his masterpiece, more a trip into the mind than an album, and them became fond of world beats. Finally, seventeen years into his career, he earned a breakthrough with So, the album I happen to be reviewing right now.

This album is excellent. The whole Web Reviewing Community simply underrates it, bashing it for being an obvious sell-out and having weaker songs than the other albums. A sellout? Well, of course it is sell-out, with more or less normal, single-oriented format and structure of the songs and with lyrics which are way easier to an ordinary radio-listenin' man to understand than lyrics on Pete's previous works. However, lyrics weren't always that important (unless you're Bob Dylan or Jeff Mangum, of course) and the tunes are still great as always. What also strikes me on this album is the arrangements of the songs - for most time, Pete combines a world beat with simple 80's production, and the result is always great. Paul Simon did it better on his Graceland album (from the same year), but I'd like to give some credit to Pete anyway.

Not that everything employs the same formula on here, of course. In fact, two of the biggest hits from here, "Sledgehammer" and "Big Time", have absolutely nothing in common with world music stuff. They are fast and catchy pop songs, and both have funny, great and inventive videos. And both are great, with "Big Tim" being my favorite, because it sounds just like Talking Heads circa '83, and I love that period in David Byrne and company's career. "Sledgehammer" is funky, it has horn blasts and a terrific "I've kicked the habit:" part at the end. These songs are great.

But the best song on here is the opening one: "Red Rain" is simply the best apocalyptic song Peter had ever written. A little percussion intro, genius vocal melody, frightening synth and drum tracks - it's all here. Not to mention that lyrics are extremely well-written, giving the best impression of nuclear attack I can even imagine to. Later in the album, there is "That Voice Again", which has the same effective drum/synth sound that "Red Rain" does, and an awesome chorus.

There are also three ballads on So, and each one of them sounds different. "Don't Give Up" is the song that many people hate (especially in the WRC which simply despises it), but I find it good. It may be a little overlong, but I still like the bass, nice atmosphere and incredible bridge, with gentle piano here and there. "In Your Eyes" was a hit, and a deserved one, because that one is gorgeous, and the arrangement is simply magical. The coda in this song is also very nice, because Pete was wise enough to enter a brilliant tribal chant there. My favorite, however, is quiet and brilliantly atmospheric "Mercy Street", written by Pete to some Anne Sexton. The key to understand its' awesome atmosphere is to listen to the song with the lights turned off. It's amazing, really.

And if you're a fan of more complex Pete's stuff, and can barely sit through the first seven songs on here, the last two tracks are for you. They recall the man's experimental stuff, yet being completely normal in structure! "We Do What We're Told (Milgram's 37)" has a dark rhythm and atmosphere everywhere, building up to a great chant part. And "This Is The Picture (Excellent Birds)" is just hilarious: it has unusual groove going through the whole song, while Peter and his collaborator Laurie Anderson simply have fun singing about painting pictureS. Honestly, I nearly laughed my ass off when I first heard it. The song also manages to close the album on a strange note that completely fits into the mood of So, which is simply one of Pete's finest solo albums, although far from being his all-time finest. Imagine that!

OVERALL RATING: 9

Peter's big commercial breakthrough as a solo artist. I've never heard any of his older stuff (as of this writing, that is - I plan on getting some), so I can't tell you how it compares to his older stuff. I CAN tell you, however, that this is a really good 80s pop album (and coming from someone who doesn't like 80s pop, that says a lot). Peter takes the 80s rock formula and jazzes it up with funky bass, great lyrics and singing, varied textures and, well, damn good tunes. Everybody's heard the funky, groovy, robotic "Sledgehammer", the Talking Heads-ish pop of "Big Time", and the slightly African world beat sounding ballad "In Your Eyes", and all of them were deservedly huge. Each one of these songs (especially the unbelievably smooth, funky and fantastic "Sledgehammer") is great. Catchy and memorable in an 80s sort of way.

The rest of the stuff here is hardly any worse, though. My favorite (besides "Sledgehammer", of course) is the slow, ponderous "Mercy Street", which features a beautiful, moving chorus and some very effective minimalist backing and great runs and frills to boot. Stunning. The cold, depressing opener, "Red Rain", is fantastic as well. Simple piano and some very emotional singing from Peter highlight the number. I've even come to love the much reviled "Don't Give Up", a very pretty duet between Peter and Kate Bush. It's kinda sappy, but still nice, and there is a really chuggin' little bass line behind it. The last 2 songs are (slightly) experimental, with weird chanting and beats going on. Groovy, baby. A very good record, this one is. Not quite worthy of a 9, but very close. Pick up a copy. You can get one used or off Ebay for less than 4 bucks. Yee-haw.

OVERALL RATING: 8

PASSION (1989)

(Nick Karn's review)

HIGH POINTS: Of These Hope, A Different Drum, It Is Accomplished. LOW POINTS: None specifically, but there's a lot of unmemorable stuff.

Three years after his hugest commercial breakthrough of So, Peter Gabriel released his second soundtrack, this one for the Martin Scorcese film The Last Temptation Of Christ. While I haven't seen the film and wouldn't know how well the music on here merges with it, the overall album on its' own is a somewhat pleasurable, if hardly easy, listen. What I mean is that Passion is made up of twenty-one tracks in over an hour of music, and all of them are instrumental, with the tone being a more extreme expansion of the worldbeat sound of Security much like Birdy, also drawing from Middle Eastern music and infusing it with the atmospheric elements of earlier releases, giving much of it an almost Brian Eno-ish quality. Like I said, the music mostly is enjoyable, but with this much of it without vocals (the exceptions are instances of chanting on a few of the tracks) on a Peter Gabriel release feels a bit empty, and a lot of it isn't exactly memorable afterwards.

Thankfully, though, there are a few choice passages that stand out as something truly captivating and even beautiful. "Of These, Hope" in particular has a really neat and mysterious synth groove that plays throughout - it's the kind that you could build an entire 10 minute song on and it would be thrilling as anything. That doesn't happen unfortunately, but I am glad it does get reprised a couple tracks later. "A Different Drum" is also a really powerful moment here, as its' huge rhythm merges perfectly with the soaring background chanting that faintly sounds like Gabriel, I would imagine. Also notable is "Sandstorm", which is just simple ambience, but it works very, very well in painting a haunting and uncertain picture of its' title effectively. And the title track, while definitely overlong, takes the sound to its' epic extreme over 7-1/2 minutes, and it's quite eerie in places.

As for the rest of the album, there's not much else to say about these tracks, though I do really like the way it all ends. The celebratory "It Is Accomplished", with its' simple, but incredibly beautiful, piano melody brings a closure to everything in seguing into the relaxing number "Bread And Wine", and "With This Love", a number arranged as a nice choir piece, brings a certain prettiness to the material. The other tracks are nice to listen to as background music, especially while working on other things with it playing, and since the album as a whole has its' moments of revelatory power in the high points, it's still very recommendable. I would just suggest to get one of Gabriel's studio albums first to get a better understanding of his music, but once you've explored his more defining stuff, it definitely wouldn't be a bad idea to come back here.

OVERALL RATING: 7

HIGH POINTS: A Different Drum, With This Love The Feeling Begins, Of These Hope, It Is Accomplished, Open, Zaar, With This Love (choir), Sandstorm. LOW POINTS: Passion

Passion is Pete's soundtrack to Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation Of Christ, a legendary movie I've never seen, but if it's as bit as good as this soundtrack, I'd run and buy it right now. Passion is the purely instrumental album mostly based on Peter's re-workings of traditional tunes collected in Africa and the Middle East, with some of his own instrumental tunes brought in. Actually, these traditional pieces were completely re-made by the man with a great taste and the sense of diversity, ranging from ambient (not that "atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere and atmosphere" ambient, but the beautiful one, created with enough musical imagery) and simple world beat stuff to completely sampled moody electronica passages and some classical music as well. All in all, Passion is some kind of a minor experiment that turned to be a very successful one in result.

Talking about actual music compositions on here, I find only one to be really worthless - a huge, seven-minute title cut. Surely, it has some nice vocals here and there, but it is nothing but the atmosphere for the whole seven minutes. It is purely atmospheric, setting some wistful and dramatic mood, but, otherwise, it is nothing. But, during other 58 minutes of Passion, Peter creates some of the most gorgeous music ever put on tape. Not being an ambient fan, I am simply amazed how good the ambient tracks are on here. "Sandstorm" sounds totally like sandstorm, with spooky atmosphere and careful airy build-up. The keyboard break in "Open" is one of these things that I can listen to forever, while "Zaar" is just beautiful.

The other thing that catches my ear upon every listen is near-classical "With This Love", which is just three minutes of horn soloing, but it's great anyway, mostly because synth strings background is nothing but brilliant. And for the last thirty of so seconds that horn disappears, replaced by aching simple piano line repeating all over to the end. The whole song is one of the most amazing definitions of pain set to music I've ever heard. Later in the album, there's a choir version of this track, and it is amazing too, and I'm not even a fan of choir singing, but this one is so well-arranged and gorgeous, that I almost cry in the end. Awesome.

Arguably the best tracks on here are "The Feeling Begins", "Of These, Hope" and "It Is Accomplished". The former begins the album with a fantastic doudouk introduction, and then come that magical synth/drum sound, and I'm simply in heaven. "Of These, Hope" is based twisted rhythm going through the whole song, with majestic synth pieces around it. Finally, there's "It Is Accomplished" and it is build on a one single keyboard line that sounds optimistic and great, and the middle part is weirdly beautiful. However, my favorite aspect of the tune is a fantastic tribal drumming from Manu Katche, which makes it a real standout.

And there's also everyone's favorite "A Different Drum", a piece that I completely adore as well. This one shows how it is easy to become a song that everyone would love: take a big and powerful tribal dance rhythm, dress it up in some synth and arrange it all for a perfect chanting vocal melody, which has actually some kind of verses and some kind of chorus, which is sung by Peter himself and it's the most memorable moment on the whole album. This is most likely the best world music composition you can hear, and one of Pete's masterpieces.

Passion is, without a doubt, the best of Pete's soundtracks, leaving the whole impression as an album more than a soundtrack, actually. And while it' s not the best instrumental album I know, it is certainly a very good one. Get it.

OVERALL RATING: 9.5

US (1992)

(Nick Karn's review)

HIGH POINTS: Steam, Come Talk To Me, Secret World, Digging In The Dirt, Only Us, Love To Be Loved. LOW POINTS: None.

Finally following up his hugest commercial success So with a lengthy gap between his next two-letter album title, Us understandably wasn't as successful as its' predecessor, probably due to that long layoff. This album basically finds Peter Gabriel in a very mellow, instrospective, and mature state that actually veers dangerously close to an adult pop sound at points. Which makes it all the more inconceivable that the songs here, from start to finish, are downright incredible masterpieces. I mean, look at what kind of supposedly mediocre or worse kind of stuff his former art rock peers were releasing the year before - Genesis were mildly stagnating in the grip of Phil Collins with We Can't Dance, Yes had the disasterous 'collaborative' failure Union, and Rush had the boring, lifeless pop of Roll The Bones, to name a few examples. And yet Peter Gabriel was producing an emotionally riveting, lyrically gorgeous classic this late in his career.

The basic reason for the introspectivity of this album lies in a painful divorce with his wife, Jill, and boy do the songs ever reflect the aftermath of this effectively - the lyrics are extremely thoughtful and deep, and Gabriel's vocals are perfect for this type of emotional outpouring. From the moment they enter following a majestic bagpipe intro and an absolutely hypnotizing rhythm to start off "Come Talk To Me", you can just feel a timelessness coming out, with an uncharacteristically top-notch melody going along with the powerful lyrical perspective. Really beautiful stuff. And the other bookend song "Secret World" floors me just about as much, with obvious melancholic, yet extremely life-affirming reflection coming from those phases of his songwriting. Tony Levin also helps this song really work, with his highly appropriate basslines in the instrumental breaks, and the whole atmosphere is just so peaceful and beautiful... wow.

Of course, the other 'mature' sounding tracks in between are really no slouches either. Like hinted at in my So review, they take a lot of the aspects of that sound and just make it better. For one thing, "Blood Of Eden" and "Love To Be Loved" both actually make use of great opening bass grooves, unlike "Don't Give Up". The former song has a more effective female vocalist (Sinead O'Connor) and gets more genuine emotion out of a slow and sensual environment without being overly soft and boring, and the latter is particularly addictive, with that bassline being nicely high in the mix, and the way Peter steals the show in the second half with its' fantastic piano-led coda is incredible - such a demonstration of his immense vocal talents. The vocals are what also really make "Washing Of The Water" another minor masterpiece - is there a more powerful showcase of Gabriel falsetto than this extraordinarily moving ballad? I didn't think so.

Plus, I also can't forget the deceptively simple slow ballad "Only Us", a song that is actually fairly complex in its' rhythmic shifts and atmospheric changes, especially when the overall pace of the song really picks up near the end. The lyrics and melody work extremely well here in creating a more raw tone to the introspectiveness here, right down to the fabulous chorus (I love that 'only us... breeeeathing...' portion). There's also an obligatory link to the Passion sound with "14 Black Paintings", a song that really shows what fabulous potential the songs on that album could have had with actual vocals and lyrics brought into the mix. It might seem like filler on first listen, but works as a great haunting sort of interlude when you really get used to it.

This album isn't all about the reflective sort of sound, though, as it does contain its' fair share of uptempo material, and interestingly enough, the best representative of that aspect of the sound is also the absolute highlight of the entire thing. Awhile back when I first heard the song, I actually thought the hit "Steam" was just a passable clone of "Sledgehammer", but I really don't know what I was thinking then. The sheer groove captured throughout the instrumentation is stunning (great guitar and bass interplay there), and the melody is extremely infectious. It's a downright fun song that just about epitomizes to me what dance music should be like as well as a complete fulfillment of similar kind of songs from So - what a really cool almost rap-like bridge too. "Kiss That Frog" also brings a much welcoming sense of humor here, with really hilarious lyrics - its' 'princess kisses frog to turn him into prince' subject matter is done in a clever and extremely groovy way, plus the organ part on this one rules.

Finally, to round out the more uptempo side of the album is "Digging In The Dirt", which marries the introspective and pained elements of the lyrical approach to this sort of sound, with a simply masterful structure, an effectively pissed off vibe, and more really infectious melodies (especially the 'I told you, I told you, I told you...' portions of it). Phew... it absolutely blows my mind that Us in all is really close to Genesis' masterpiece Selling England By The Pound in quality while having virtually nothing in common with it, and boasting a unique Peter Gabriel Band sound. So if you haven't figured it out already, this is my favorite of his albums, and one of the absolute best of the decade in my opinion, boasting everything from unbeatable emotional and atmospheric quality, sheer entertainment value, and actual top-notch melodies. The only thing it doesn't have is the thrilling vibe of III, but that album couldn't hope to feel as complete as this one. Unfortunately, it took him 10 years to even follow it up, but no one said the guy was quick or anything.

* OVERALL RATING: 10 *

(Philip Maddox's review)

Peter's long-awaited followup to So seems to have taken on some kind of untouchable godlike status among web reviewers, who almost unanimously laud it as his greatest work and an unapproachable pop music emotional zenith, or whatever. What's almost unintentionally hilarious about this is that both critics and the general public greeted the album in 1992 with a massive "eh," and almost everywhere you look besides this pretentious little circle of personal reviewers (or "Rhode Island," as I've seen it described), you'll probably find a lot of people who share the same opinion. In a small sense, the album is a disappointment, but only if you compare it to the commercial expectations heaped upon Gabentelechy after "Sledgehammer" heated up the charts - the music is a lot more overblown and intensely personal, recorded while Peter was getting over a divorce, and the album is heavy on soundtrackish layering and six-minute-plus running times. Basically, this is music for yuppies and '80s hangovers hidden under a heavily-produced guise of majestic importance. That would be an insulting statement in any other context (Mike & The Mechanics), but Pete really took the yuppie factor and funneled it into one of his best collections of songs.

Basically, the album takes the flaws of So and fixes all of them. Was that last platter too fragmented for you? Don't worry, everything flows like some sort of sieve on this baby. Couldn't stand Kate Bush's backing vocals? Never fear, golden-voiced Pope-ripper Sinead O'Connor sings in the background this time around, and regardless of her out-of-studio political posturing, she sounds fantastic. Even the single "Steam," which was particularly ripped apart as an attempt to emulate the groove of "Sledgehammer," stands as a monument to the stupidity of mainstream critics since it's like ten times better and has a much more convincingly funky arrangement. Even the music video is loads better - the opening scene has Pete decked out in purple pimp gear surrounded by his bitches and waving aside a computer-generated crowd like he owns the place, and it's tight, yo.

All in all, this is just an impressive collection of songs, layered and self-consciously "complex" as they might be. The songs obviously positioned as the standouts are the expansive "Come Talk To Me" and "Secret World," respectively the opener and closer, pretentious-as-hell but so perfectly melodic that it's just impossible not to like them. The slower ballads ("Blood Of Eden" especially) resonate in a full and living way that "Don't Give Up" couldn't have achieved in its wildest wussy wet dreams, and there are a couple of sexed-up murky dance tracks ("Digging In The Dirt" and "Kiss That Frog") wisely positioned to wake up the sleepy-eyed balladry-hating cynics out there, and you know who you are. The rest of the songs are somewhat fillerish, but that doesn't mean that "Love To Be Loved" doesn't have an absolutely godly bassline courtesy once again of Tony Levin or that "Only Us" doesn't possess the coolest murky guitar tone ever set to CD, if I may randomly and pointlessly generalize. This is a great friggin' album, even though Pete hasn't released a single thing since its release because he's been too busy shaving his head and contributing boring songs to soundtracks. He's supposedly working on a new album called Up, but there's no way in hell that it could possibly surpass the Right Said Fred masterpiece of the same name.

OVERALL RATING: 9

It took Peter 6 years to produce an official follow up to So (he released the instrumental film score Passion, but I don't have it. At least not yet), and his effort wasn't quite as strong, but still strong enough to earn the same rating (though this is a low 8 I'm granting this album as opposed to a high one). This one is more somber and depressing than the last one, as Peter was going through a rough divorce at the time. The best songs on here communicate his sadness extremely well. The opening "Come Talk To Me" works especially well in that respect - simple, reflective, gorgeously melancholy vocals and lyrics over a dense worldbeat rhythm.

The closer "Secret World" is very similar, featuring an equally great melody and depressing mood. The slow duet with Sinead O'Connor, "Blood Of Eden", is similar to (but better than) "Don't Give Up" from the last album, except featuring much better lyrics (in fact, every song on this album has much better lyrics than the last album) and a generally prettier, better melody. Nice. I even love the ultra-slow, reassuring melancholy of "Washing Of The Water", which was featured in the movie Angus, but wasn't used in the soundtrack because it doesn't really fit in with the dumb power punk on that release. Pity, because it's better than just about anything on that album. Peter's voice never sounded better (and I mean never).

Some of the album is still kinda upbeat, though, most notably on the singles "Steam" and "Kiss That Frog", both of which try REALLY hard to one-up "Sledgehammer". They don't, of course, but they're still really good. "Steam" has got a fast, groovy bassline and some funky vocals throughout, creating a 6 minute song that never gets old. "Kiss That Frog" isn't as good, but it's funny and funky, so I'll give it an official thumbs up. The rest is all pretty good, but not as spectacular. Good enough to earn an 8, and that's nothing to sneeze at. It's a very mature record, I guess you could say, and some of the stuff is a bit TOO mature, bordering on boring, but never actually becoming boring. God, that sounded awkward, didn't it? Anyway, the point is, this is another good record, and you should like this if you liked So, and vice versa.

OVERALL RATING: 8

LONG WALK HOME (2002)

(reviewed by Nick Karn)

HIGH POINTS: Jigalong, Running To The Rain. LOW POINTS: impossible to tell, as there's a lot of scattered boredom.

During the long, obsessive recording of Up, Peter Gabriel was asked to do yet another atmospheric soundtrack, this time for a film based on a true story about a fourteen year old aboriginal girl named Molly Craig who escapes from the government across the long Australian outback with her sister and cousin. An interesting concept to build a soundtrack around, no doubt, though unfortunately I still can't really view this as anything more than a stop-gap album of background music between regular studio efforts than an excellent Gabriel album in its' own right, as much as I really want to. The music does often do a good job of conveying the 'outback' mood through the eerie instrumentation, but that doesn't stop large portions of this album from doing nothing for me other than serve as pleasant, but unmemorable, backing music to a worse degree than Birdy or Passion.

Of course, Long Walk Home isn't exactly bad (being a Peter Gabriel album and all), as there are definitely moments that stand out as interesting. There's the neat disconnected, dark ambience and catchy two-note acoustic guitar theme of the opening "Jigalong", the chaotic industrialized intensity of "Stealing The Children" (though a lot of that one is essentially another remake of the end of "The Rhythm Of The Heat", which annoys me a little), the cold pulse of "The Tracker", and the hauntingly dynamic "Go Away Mr. Evans", as well as previews of Up in the orchestral buildup of "Running To The Rain" (which utilizes string arrangements from "Signal To Noise" to powerful effect) and an extension of the chanted Blind Boys Of Alabama coda from "Sky Blue" near the end (these climaxes, while a bit repetitive, actually probably work better than "Sky Blue" itself).

However, I just don't feel anywhere near as much Gabriel genius in even the highlights as I do with his previous albums, soundtracks included. It's all professionally recorded and layered, but there's very little that grips me in quite the same way as his best mood-based stuff, and other than those reprises of "Sky Blue" toward the end, a lot of the second half just loses me, especially when it goes into that 10 minute, three part "The Return" segment that revisits previous themes. A lot of this I can't even remember at all, and sitting through the whole album for almost an hour gets kind of tiring for me when I don't used exclusively as background music (which it does work fine as). Not exactly a weak album when compared to normal music standards, though it definitely seems non-descript and subpar by Gabriel standards to me - let's just say I'm glad I didn't hear this until after Up came out.

OVERALL RATING: 6

UP (2002)

(Nick Karn's review)

HIGH POINTS: Signal To Noise, My Head Sounds Like That, Darkness. LOW POINTS: None.

Ah, so it's finally upon us - the new studio album with a title Gabriel claimed he had in mind before R.E.M. came up with their own Up record, and that itself was almost four years before. Apparently, he wrote something like 150 songs for this one, recorded the entire thing in several different locations, and then narrowed the experience down to 10 songs for the final product. And those songs that were selected most definitely emphasize that a lot of time was spent laboring over the final product - almost every song is layered with subtleties that reveal themselves with every listen (to use a reviewing cliche), and many of them build almost like art rock epics - the first nine songs on here are all over 6 or 7 minutes long,with only the closing "The Drop" being just under three. So that means there's quite a bit to take in here for the listener, as there should be after such a long wait. But was that wait worth it?

Well, I honestly can't say that for sure, only being a very recent fan of Gabriel music, but I can say this is a pretty impressive, extremely consistent album. In fact, only a couple factors prevent me from giving it a higher rating - none of the songs individually match the peaks of his very best albums (Us, III and Security), and there's nothing particularly different about these songs that he hadn't already tried before. But otherwise, I can't complain, since his songwriting skills are still going strong, with not a single weak track to be found. Even my least favorite, the panoramic though not particularly special "Sky Blue" is still good, with an effective lengthy chanting coda and intriguing atmosphere. Yes, I even like the out-of-place single "The Barry Williams Show" - dated talk show-bashing lyrics aside, it's still a catchy uptempo tune (the most upbeat one here, actually) with a simplistic, but charming chorus. Plus the darker, epic instrumental breaks (featuring a nifty mix of orchestration and trumpet melodies) are top notch, helping to almost hilariously stretch this to just over 7 minutes!

Don't expect the rest of this stuff to sound like that, though - a lot of the rest is particularly dark and unsettling, best emphasized, appropriately enough, in the opening "Darkness". It's easy to view this song as almost a cross between the moods of "Intruder" (the sudden heavy guitar bursts coming out of the quiet intro, plus those paranoid lyrics) and "Secret World" (the quiet piano breaks, which actually work beautifully) and it builds convincingly with other embellishments along the way (ncluding that eerie 'curled up in a ballllll' bridge) adding up to a minor classic. Its' followup "Growing Up" is certainly no slouch either, coming damn close to highlight status. Again, the structure here is inventive, blending a haunting electronic intro with dancey verses during which the vocals hit a chilling low tone to them. And I love that climax around five minutes in! Maybe that cheesy organ playing the 'suspiciously close to "Steam"' main melody at the end isn't very appropriate, but otherwise, fine song.

The rest of the songs are all good as well in reaffirming the guy's talents. Maybe there's not anything particularly shattering about stuff like "No Way Out" or the aforementioned "The Drop", but they're still so appealing nonetheless. Gotta like the shuffling tempo of the former's verses, majestic "Red Rain"-style chorus and riveting percussion-heavy ending. Plus, it strikes me as an interesting that he decided to end the album with the latter song, a minimalistic II-styled piano ballad that sounds like it was written in about 10 minutes, as opposed to the heavily labored over remainder. Additionally, reworking his City Of Angels soundtrack contribution "I Grieve" from a few years ago as the side closer might be a bit of a cheat, but what the heck, it's another darn good song as well - it's very atmospheric (with a few effective subtle textures coming through in the mix), with an emphasis on the emotional vocals and lyrics, and the uptempo rhythmic bridge with acoustic guitar popping out is effective.

Finally, there's that awesome three song stretch in side two's middle. "My Head Sounds Like That" is especially worthy, as there's something ominous about the way this piano-based tune goes through haunting key changes in the refrain, with perfect placement of brass arrangement, and more importantly, it's a perfect example of how this guy's atmospheric and vocal skills haven't let down much. "More Than This" is nearly as good, featuring the neat contrast between dark, dramatic grumbling guitar riff verses and softer, poppy So-ish chorus, and "Signal To Noise"... well, that one just might be my favorite! Everything about this song is sheer power, from the very effective use of dark orchestration that rises intensely throughout, the epic chanting of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in between verse and chorus, and especially the yells of 'WIPE OUT THE NOISE!' over skull-pounding percussion. I could go on, as there's really a lot to get about this album, so I'll leave the rest up for the listener. A step down from Us, sure, buit certainly not disappointing by any standard. Nice to see that Pete has returned!

OVERALL RATING: 8

I can't say that I, personally, was waiting a particularly long time for this album's release, since I first bought So in 1997 and didn't particularly like Peter Gabriel's music until a couple of years later, when I discovered the web reviewing community and realized how freaking great an artist can be once you jump on his raging bandwagon of praise. I do remember the controversy in late '98, though, when R.E.M. decided to name their own latest album Up for basically no reason at all, unless Michael Stipe was attempting to pay tribute to Right Said Fred for the sake of forming a Bald People musical brotherhood or something. I think it's pretty damn funny that Pete scrambled to justify why he was keeping his album title as it was since he named it that for the sake of thematic consistency (apparently it's short for "Up The River" or "Up The Stream" or something), when it wasn't even going to come out for another four years, by which time R.E.M. had released another new album that the public promptly forgot about.

So, yeah, basically, here's Up, the album that proves that Pete is indeed capable of outdoing Tom Scholz in the "meticulous chronic perfectionist" department, and with songs that don't end up all sounding the same at that. Still, to be honest, in spite of all of the obvious craft that I can feel oozing out of every crevice in the album's rock-solid production values, I have to say that I'm disappointed. See, the problem is that I decided to throw in Us a week or so after this album's release to remind myself where Pete was coming from. And even though just like this one, that album was an impossibly-polished, incredibly lengthy set of what some might peg as glorified adult pop, it consistently had songs that stood out and made themselves known. I actively looked forward to hearing stuff like "Secret World" and "Digging In The Dirt." With a couple of exceptions, that just isn't the case on here -- everything sounds nice and the compositional and organizational skill that went into producing every single track is readily apparent, but in the end it does very little to establish any of the songs as an individual entity worth giving a crap about.

There's some good stuff, of course. "Growing Up" is the obvious highlight, even though for all of Gabe's claims that it "charts life's journey from the womb until death," it's basically a really long, artsy disco song. Make those armchair philosophers shake their asses, Pete!!! "More Than This" is pretty catchy and sprightly for this late in such an old, bald man's career, and I even sort of get a kick out of the stupid single "The Barry Williams Show," even though the idea of verbally lambasting Jerry Springer makes it clear exactly how long this man has been working on this album. Plus, the chorus is so totally Gabriel put in a trendy, modern pop context that it's easy for me to forgive that it's basically one note. The opener "Darkness" is neat, though the randomly-transposed bursts of screaming intensity sound exactly like a 2002 take on "Intruder." Speaking of ripoffs, is that the chorus to "Seven Stones" that I hear in the fadeout of "Sky Blue," MMMMMMM? Raiding your store of underrated Genesis songs, aren't you, Pete? Aren't you?

To sum it all up, Pete pretty much spent ten years ceaselessly polishing what has to be the most indistinguished set of songs he's written since... uh... Trespass. Only with a lot more style and verve, because that's what sells!!!

OVERALL RATING: 6.5