My Top 20 albums for 1978 No 8

PETER GABRIEL (II)

More refined, with quite a lot of good stuff over here - this is Peter's 'pop' masterpiece before a radical change of direction.
Best song: ON THE AIR

Track listing: 1) On The Air; 2) D.I.Y.; 3) Mother Of Violence; 4) A Wonderful Day In A One-Way World; 5) White Shadow; 6) Indigo; 7) Animal Magic; 8) Exposure; 9) Flotsam And Jetsam; 10) Perspective; 11) Home Sweet Home.

Actually, this is something in between an 8 and a 9, something like an 8.5 - I still can't define my feelings towards the second side here. Fans call this album 'Scratch', but if you look close enough, you'll notice that the streaks coming from Peter's fingers cannot really be traces of scratching, because in that case he'd have to have his palms turned the other side. To me, this seems more like some kind of lightning coming out of his fingers, which is even a more cool concept. Of course, it's probably scratching nevertheless, just a contradictory one.
In reality, though, this isn't a metaphor - this album doesn't 'scratch' or 'grate' even a single bit, like the previous one. Here, Peter was joined by Robert Fripp, and together they decided to record a slightly more 'normal' record, in that it's no longer such a horrible mix of styles. This seems okay to me - a solid collection of soft piano ballads and loud guitar rockers, with some deviating oddity appearing only at times. This is still very far from the things Peter would start trying out in a few years, but nevertheless, it's still one more step away from Genesis past and in the future. There are almost no more self-references (no 'Solsbury Hill') or medieval fantasies (no 'Moribund'): lyrically, Peter steps onto the tricky path of social critique - almost every song has some anti-society reference to it, starting from the environmentalism of 'On The Air' and ending with the absolute stupidity of modern life on 'Home Sweet Home'. He handles the task with honour, though: most of the lyrics are intriguing and intelligent. Musically, there are still few evidences of the upcoming electronical onslaught: apart from some distracting Frippertronics on a couple of tracks, this is just your standard drums-guitar-piano kind of thing. Even the synths are used sparingly, and this makes it for perhaps Peter's most fresh-sounding album ever - especially if you can't stand all that hi-tech stuff.
Almost every song on the album has something exciting to offer. The one that's the most well-known is, of course, 'On The Air', a bombastic, metallic power-rocker about the advantages of living out of town; even today, it stands as one of the loudest and angriest Gabriel compositions. Fripp does a mammoth job on this one, punching out the rumbling riff and the blistering solos, and my only complaint is that Peter sounds a bit muddy and strained - I actually prefer his vocals on the Plays Live album, even if in general it's a tie because the live version has no Fripp. In fact, the 'vocal' problem is one of the most annoying on the record: much, much too often the production is so murky that I can't hear Peter at all, whereas for me, the clearer the vocals, the better the song (I think I've mentioned in my Genesis reviews that I only felt a true passion for Gabriel after hearing him sing accapella on 'Dancing With The Moonlit Knight'). Thus, the production almost ruins the other catchy rocker on the album, 'D.I.Y.': the ingenious ascending guitar riff is an absolute marvel, but dammit, I can't hear what the hell the guy is singing at all! Again, be sure to grab the live album for that...
It gets better on the lighter numbers, though, where the gentle acoustic guitars and piano chords don't mess up the voice. 'Mother Of Violence' may not be gorgeous, but it's very pretty and touching, and hey, what's that accent? 'Znapping her heels, clicking her does...' Is it German or what? It's groovy! And the two other 'gentle' ballads are even better: 'Indigo' deals with the premonition of death, and 'Home Sweet Home' is the definite 'soft' highlight of the album, a charming sounding McCartney-esque ballad where Peter tells a horrible story of dire straits, starvation, and death with a thoroughly unexpected and even dumbfounding ending, all in that sweety-sappy tone of his. It isn't even 'tongue-in-cheek', it's just scary - and leaves a lot of questions to be answered.
And then, of course, there are the 'weird' moments of this record (as if all that previous stuff wasn't weird enough). There's a bit of rhythm experimentation on 'A Wonderful Day In A One Way World', a song with Dylan-influenced lyrics (dealing with a rich man's troubled position on this Earth, it seems) and a silly, but exciting reggae pattern. Personally, I love those twinkling guitar licks on it, and, as far as I know, it's the only time Peter ever flirted with reggae. And there's a gloomy, synth-laden, trippy instrumental jam ('Exposure'), where Peter keeps singing the title through some Vocoder. It's eerie, and presumably predicts some of his later experimentalism on the third album.
Overall, the production on here is really not that strong, like I said, and plus, there are three or four songs that can't really hold their ground against the more 'weighty' numbers: 'Animal Magic' and 'Perspective' are bouncy, upbeat rockers that I enjoy quite a lot while they're playing but really can't remember much when they're over; 'Flotsam And Jetsam' is a piece of charming, but tepid balladeering; and 'White Shadow', with its apocalyptic visionarism and lengthy guitar jam at the end, seems to be Peter's solo version of 'Firth Of Fifth', but it can't help being inferior. I mean, none of these numbers are bad, but they don't have Peter Gabriel's soul etched in them - and when there's no Peter Gabriel soul, he can never get on by technical features alone. So I guess I'll leave an eight here, and, anyway, for some strange reason critics don't like this album at all (the All-Music Guide states it as highly inferior to the debut, a thing I simply can't get), so I consider my treatment of it very fair.
Featured Songs On The Air White Shadow