Peter Gabriel
II

THE REVIEW

A) The Blue Fairy always forgets to wear underwear under her skirt when she leaves the house.

B) My sister gives it away like Bordeaux mixture on vines.

C) There was a time when Peter Gabriel released an album of new material on average every two years.

Only one of these statements is true, and there seems to be no doubt that it is the second one. Actually, my sister is a fictional character just like the Blue Fairy, so by elimination, the most incredible statement, the third one, turns out to be true.

Those who listen to Gabriel know well that his pace has long been "leeeeggermente" slower, and they suffer for it. And things have not improved lately. After the release of "Up," I remember reading somewhere some of his considerations that already then sounded to me like famous last words, something like: "I wrote a lot of music for the album, much of it remained in the drawer, meaning that "Up" will soon have a little brother."...indeed.

Below you will find some of my personal impressions of the second album released in that fortunate period, the album inexplicably titled "2," and so another duplicate will further fatten the belly of this site. Patience, forgive me! Or don’t, and then may all the wine in your cellar spoil, leaving you only with the fizzy Bonarda that your better half loves, but you can’t even stomach with a plunger.

Well.

I was talking about "2." In the opinions I've read here and elsewhere, there always emerges a reason why it can't be considered at the level of the next two albums, and most of the time it's due to Gabriel's lack of clarity of ideas that you feel when listening to the album.

I confess to having a soft spot for this neither fish nor flesh Gabriel. This album has a sound that's very particular to me, a particularity that I can't attribute to anything specific.

There are no sounds extracted by going around junkyards smashing old CRT television screens or blowing into rusty pipes, there isn't the superbattery of the third album. There is something, however, several ingredients, perhaps a bit of melancholy, perhaps something else, I’m not even sure myself, that makes it feel so particular to me.

My first listen to "2" dates back several years, but I still clearly have present the sensations it gave me. Its purchase was very troubled, it took several months in which I mulled over it many times, on one hand, there was the disappointment for the singles of "Us" just released then, terrible (in my opinion), on the other hand, I was attracted by the fantastic Hipgnosis studio cover, and I knew that I had never gone wrong trusting that an album with a nice cover contained good music. In the end, I bought it, and that day I brought home a good deal of expectations too.

These last ones had a short life, the guitar riff of "On the Air" took care of sweeping them all away in one fell swoop and putting me instantly on the pristine path of the unknown. Probably, I didn't expect from him such a "call a spade a spade, call wine wine" rock.

It must be said that when Gabriel puts his mind to going mad, he succeeds very well. His masterful proof in the matter is available to all fans of madness: Peter Gabriel 3, but even in this honest work, you can find some proofs of high school. "On the Air" is one of these.

Hearing him in the guise of one of his thousand alter egos shouting at kids raised on steaks, warning them that he has the power and that he is proud to be loud, is priceless. For everything else, you can turn to the bank counters of Tonino, with Michelino and Pippo acting as tellers.

During the first listen of the album, many other things pleasantly surprised me: the piano scale that intersperses the verses of do-it-yourself, the keyboard riff, the melody, and the evocative vocal interpretation of "White Shadow," the wacky "Wonderful Day In A One-Way World": "there is no respect for superman in a supermarket", what a world! Then the bass and the again disturbed Gabriel of Exposure, the beauty of "Flotsam And Jetsam," which the author provided as an example to a journalist to show it wasn't true he didn't write love songs, and the splendid "Indigo" and "Home Sweet Home." That particularity in the sound I mentioned earlier, I also feel it in the tracks I like less ("Animal Magic" and "Perspective"), so I always listen to the whole album with pleasure.

In my opinion, it represents together with "3" and "4" the best of solo Gabriel.