Peter Gabriel

Anyway, "Moribund the Burgermeister" is a great, weird number, but there's also not much separating it from past work. "Modern Love" is a no frills rock tune, very much no way he would play something like that today (sadly; he could use an injection of livelihood on his last albums), "Excuse Me" is a semi-comic relief number with barbershop quartet opening. "Humdrum" is also very Genesis-like, but I think it's the best tune on the album.

The second album I've actually never heard, in all my years of being a fan. I keep meaning to pick it up, especially since everything's been remastered. People say it's pretty underrated...

I never really liked his third album, myself. The songs just never really clicked with me, except maybe "Intruder".

i've never heard the simple minds version, but Robert Wyatt covers it, and beautifully at that

For me, "San Jacinto" and "Rhythm of the Heat" come damn close...

So!

"Red Rain"!

Oh yeah man, I have totally been on a Red Rain trip of late. Just can't get away from that song at all.

Listened to it driving through the farmland surrounding Bristol, VA in bright, bright sunlight following a hotel morning today. 100% arcadian.

Listen to the sound of the drums before the break!

xpost

Fantastic! I grew up in VA.

I <3 Daniel Lanois 4-ever.

Yeah, "Red Rain". "Mercy Street" too. Something about that line: "swear they moved that sign."

It's funny, because I was browsing YouTube and had just finished watching this when I saw this thread. These two have always struck me as two sides of the same coin, both following a particularly English trail of slightly ethereal slightly mad overflowingly creative whimsy.

Peter looks so young there!

Were he and Kate ever in a romantic relationship with one another? I thought I remembered reading this, but I can't find anything confirming it. I must have made it up.

Doesn't he? I'm not sure, but it would be kind of weird, like siblings making out. Which is also creepily awesome in their case (and only in their case, right?).

aaaaaaahhhhh! It's the performance of "Another Day"! I haven't seen this in awhile. WOW. Thanks!

No really, this has made my night. Oh my god.

I know. Mine too.

New album is called "Big Blue Balls"!!

Here Comes The Flood

http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/nn306/Floridian_20/GabrielCatII.jpg

IS HE GOTH OR NOT? LOOK AT THAT PICTURE!

He's going to marry Kate Bush and they're going to rein as king and queen of the desert island. And we're all going to be happy. Just you wait.

Peter Gabriel is even more heavenly than Brian Eno, and that's saying something.

Here Comes The Flood

― Sleep Tundra (Bimble Is Still More Goth Than You)

Here comes the late-night revive of the borderline goth thread by drunken Bimble, amirite?

hahahahah too right

HCTF = epic

whoa kate in the clip

As good as that is, the version on Fripp's Exposure is ten times better.

I saw PG live on the So tour, which was some big poppy stuff amid a lot of other stuff I didn't really get. And yet it was still a quasi-religious experience, although I couldn't really tell you why.

san jacinto KILLIN me right now

BLAST FROM THE PAST:

Is it just me, or does Pete look more than a little like Ed Helms in that HCTF clip?

SAN JACINTO
SAN JACINTO

Just to take me to heaven on that live album, goddamnit, wings, take me...take me there

Solsbury Hill.

HERE COMES THE FLOOD

"White Shadow" is awesome! Are there any other songs in this world where pedal steel sounds so epic?

not a rhetorical question btw

Passioni: walloping beats, Fairlights backing violin lines, something called "Arghul drones," * a boys choir singing "With This Love," a track called "It is Accomplished" waiting to become a pop song. I love this album.

* I learned much about music by studying Peter Gabriel instrumental credits.

It's a good'n'.

Sharing "your eyes" with a stranger at a bar

It must be hard holding that jukebox up over your head.

Someone tell Axl that it has been 12 years since the last Peter Gabriel album of original material.

he said recently maybe he'll be done soon. yeah right!

PG is part of a group that teaches the world how to take better videos when filming brutality as a firsthand witness.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/teaching-citizens-shoot-better-video-witness-brutality/

Aw he's a good guy

Birdy ost is my favorite pg album now. No words just vibes for miles.

Has Gabriel ever spoke about Gary Brooker from Procol Harum as being an influence? Listening to A Salty Dog right now and man sometimes the melody and phrasing and even tone of his voice reminds me of Gabriel (or I guess it could be an coincidence or even vice versa as they are essentially contemporaries)

He supposedly has brought him up as an influence, though I don't know when/where. At the least Brooker (and most of Genesis, a couple of years later) all went to Charterhouse.

And, ha!, I've never heard this before:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct_R6CPD5-o

I can't think of anyone better suited to sound like Peter Gabriel in 2023 than Peter Gabriel. That it sounds like Peter Gabriel is icing on the cake.

He said in the latest NYTimes interview that he has a bunch more in the can and that the next album should come quicker. Here’s hoping he brings on a producer who’ll nudge him out of his familiar grooves a little.

the next album should come quicker

lol. Well, it couldn't come any slower!

I, for one, look forward to his next release at 93.

2093.

its weird how this full album finally being out has made me reassess the whole thing even though I kept a running playlist of every song as they came out and listened to it all year. I'd been 'meh' on some of it which is often the case when an act like this that was so important to me musically when I was younger releases something after a long time; I'd thought the same about Up when it came out (whereas I'd obsessively loved Us on the day of release). I eventually came around on Up but it took years. I'm inclined to think this is every bit as good as Up and some tracks are superior. When it works it really works; when it doesn't quite work, its really only barely missing...nothing makes me cringe here. Anyway, very happy with the album in the end.

Some of the lyrics are little cringy, but he's been in introspective new age self-help mode since "Us."

Only skippers for me after a few listens to the Darkside mix are "The Court" and "Road To Joy"

"Four Kinds of Horses" is sublime

Wild that this isn’t making any Year End Lists

"Four Kinds of Horses" is sublime

yes! when these were trickling out I was worried there wasn't a standout track, a "mercy street" or "I grieve" etc, but I was wrong, Horses is it.

I love that song.

"And Still" gets me every time I hear it.

Yeah that is also a profoundly moving song for me, having lost my mom this year.

I’m really enjoying the inside mix of the album via AirPods btw. The dark side mix is what I listen to in the car and on vinyl, and it sounds great there. But the inside mix is really rewarding and I like having to listen to it closely via headphones to appreciate it, it makes for a more intimate listening experience.

This album is pretty great. I guess what happens when you take 22 years between records is that a lot of people move on and stop paying attention?

There's at least a handful of albums I can think of that are like that, where I immediately enjoy them and wonder if I'm misjudging the quality, only to realize that it's been over a full decade, maybe even two, and it's likely the artist was able to stockpile or carefully sculpt an album's worth of solid material thanks to the extra time.

I still don't know how to respond to this album

Which in and of itself is an intriguing response.

is there like a dark and light album im afraid to get involved

I didn't get much out of the singles as they were released, but spending time with the album as a whole, I've come to look past some of the PG-in-a-can grooves and melodies and enjoy it for what it is. His late albums (from Ovo onwards) are a different beast from what came before, slower, more reflective, less experimental, more focused on the message than on chasing exciting sounds. I also think his self-production (or "perfectionism") tends to bury the musicians in murk. But accepting all that, his voice is still great, and some of these songs have grown on me: Four Horses, Love Can Heal, even This is Home.

I really like that you can hear a lot of live Manu this time as opposed to the loop-heavy stuff

was not expecting "road to joy" to sound so scritti politti

this is such a 90s-album-by-80s-star album

it's definitely better than i expected, though inconsistent and the tracks tend towards being longer than they need to be (though that's long been the case with him). very possibly his best in over 30 years regardless

truly do not understand the point of the two mixes and the release strategy didn't do him any favours

this is such a 90s-album-by-80s-star album

― ufo, Thursday, December 14, 2023 4:12 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

love this record but will begrudgingly admit that this is otm

^^this

it's like exactly the album he would have put out in 1997 or so

other things "road to joy" reminds me of: music from the spyro games, nine inch nails in a major key

"i'm afraid of americans"

There are a few songs on this album that definitely echo other Peter Gabriel records, or at least the last two. Again, probably because he reportedly started this one in 1995! As early as 2000 Gabriel was saying that "i/o" was supposed to be a quick follow-up to "Up."

Especially interesting because Up came out in 2002.

Yeah. People forget, Up came 10 years after Us, and people were complaining that *that* one was taking too long!

i think i slightly prefer the dark-side mixes but not enough to justify the gimmick.

I'm just glad he didn't release it as this:

https://www.stemplayer.com

wish it were a little weirder maybe, but this album is good! it's also poppier than I expected: I can remember many of the choruses after two listens

As fairly casual fan (I listened to So a lot when I was 8, and that’s about it) the songs here seem more interesting and accessible than anything else I’ve heard post-So

I’m not sure I get the “90s record” reference - it sounds more like a sheen-y 2010s album to me. It’s missing that “someone’s just heard NIN for the first time” vibe

So as a record for eight-year-olds kinda jibes with my feelings about PG.

lol what

Kids Bop version of Mercy Street

in your daddy's arms

what 8 year old wants to sing "we do what we're told to do"

Not gonna happen in this century

So I listened to So a lot when I was 8 or 9 because every kid loved the Sledgehammer video. And it was one of four CDs my parents owned (the others were Brothers in Arms, Equinoxe and Marriage of Figaro)

All I remember about Peter Gabriel when I was a growing up was thinking he was the middle-aged guy who crooned "In Your Eyes." Later on when I found out he was in Genesis (who I associated with "We Can't Dance") and saw a picture of them back in the '70s with Gabriel in complete make-up and costume, it was like "wuuuut?"

Fun little gem dropped on his Bandcamp subscription today -- a rough 1981 studio mix of "I Go Swimming" with the vocals.

New rarity up for the subscribers:

This version of Biko, was recorded in June, 1980 with The Looking Glass School, in Wellow, Somerset.
The school, formed in 1979, was an arts and crafts focussed primary and middle school founded by the British-American artist Jann Haworth, a leading figure in the British Pop Art movement and pioneer of soft sculpture.
Haworth is also the co-creator, along with her then husband Peter Blake, of the The Beatles 1967 Sgt. Pepper’’s Loney Hearts Club Band album cover and is an advocate for feminist rights, especially for the representation of women in the art world.

“I’d known Jann and Peter and their alternative school and I was very interested in the way they experimented with education. I kept in touch and was invited to do a project with the kids which is when this version of Biko was recorded" - pg

Recorded at Crescent Studios and Wellow School, Avon, Somerset on 11 June 1980.

Didn’t know he had a Bandcamp???

Yeah Real World set one up a long while back and his solo catalog has been on there forever, plus he's been using it via a subscription service to share out both rarities and new tracks -- he dropped everything from i/o on there month per month before its release. We talk about it all upthread!

I think I ignored those since I’m not really interested in his current music but I’m game for rarities from the vault.

i/o is really good, its insane it got like no critical attention

It definitely didn't help to release it after the tour, which prematurely drew most of the attention.