Kevin Gilbert
The Shaming of the True

Kevin Gilbert was a genius. But as sometimes happens to geniuses, he left almost unnoticed, known only to insiders and remembered almost exclusively for being Sheryl Crow's boyfriend (and probably the main architect of her success). He passed away 12 years ago, on May 17, '96, not yet 30 years old. And today, we are left with a handful of works from him, testifying to an extraordinary talent, somewhere between singer-songwriter and prog but still difficult to confine within the boundaries of a genre.

Born in Sacramento, and living between New Jersey and California, he was struck by music from the preadolescent phase ("he ate less and less, slept little, read a lot, composed more," writes his brother Greg in the biographical notes on the site www.kevingilbert.com to describe Kevin as a thirteen-year-old). From there to the tragic end, sixteen years in which Gilbert learned to play (guitar, keyboards, percussion, and much more, he was also a highly appreciated sound technician as well as a much sought-after session musician), sang with his warm and passionate voice, formed and dissolved various bands, including Giraffe with whom, at the 1994 Progfest in Los Angeles, he starred in an extraordinary full performance of the Genesis masterpiece, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, released twenty years earlier, which earned him, according to never-confirmed urban legends, even a (never realized) audition with Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford to become the new Genesis vocalist after Phil Collins' first departure. The Lamb by Peter Gabriel is a good starting point to delve into this The Shaming of the True, a concept album that Kevin was working on for some time before his death and which was completed only four years later, in 2000, thanks to the passion of friends John Rubin and Nick D'Virgilio, drummer and vocalist among other things in Spock's Beard (a band for which Gilbert was a sound technician).
In the album, 14 tracks over an hour long, there's a lot of autobiography: the protagonist is Johnnie Virgil, an aspiring rockstar who greatly resembles Gabriel's Rael, a victim of the demons of a sick society and a record industry that devours anyone who enters its mechanisms. Johnny will achieve success but will find peace only by escaping, "Way back home", a return home indicated to him by a sort of mad prophet in love. A happy ending that sadly Kevin will never reach. Musically, the album is difficult to categorize: there's prog, there are arpeggiated guitars and moog passages, in some passages the atmospheres, especially the guitar textures, nod to King Crimson (Gilbert’s voice, in my opinion, resembles that of John Wetton, but there are echoes of Bowie and David Sylvian as well). All with a sprinkling of AOR and a taste of funky (and the horns, apparently foreign to the context, fit perfectly). But beyond the genre, the unique text-music combination created by listening to this work is truly fascinating, the merit of an unresolved artist but with a crystalline talent. The treasures? Hard to choose: perhaps the painful Certifiable number 1 smash, a very intense rock with almost hard guitar riffs and a terribly painful text. Definitely the splendid Way back home, with that hope-opening built on very soft atmospheres reminiscent of Peter Gabriel's solo works.

An album that, in my opinion, may not be to everyone's taste, but it certainly cannot leave anyone indifferent because it is so inspired, suffered, painful, TRUE. And also technically a gem, which is no small feat.