C/D: Peter Gabriel's "Up"

If you wanted "I Grieve," you could have already got it from the City Of Angels OST, but you'd have missed out on the suite it forms with "No Way Out." "No Way Out" remains the centerpiece for me, and benefits from some really killer bass guitar work by usual suspect Tony Levin. Not even the hook, though that's quite fine, but the fills throughout.

"More Than This" is the strongest back-half track, reprising the minor-key sonic drama of "Darkness" but channeling the tension (and the neat little funk guitar lick and the outer-space radio-interference-slash-teakettle synth sound) outward. "Signal To Noise," which features the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, is also effective. "Sky Blue" also ranks with PG's best work, both the version here and the one on Long Walk Home.

There's really no single, and while the percussion is as important as ever it's not as forward in the very very dense mix as it was on Security or So, or even Us, which takes away some immediacy but also gives the tracks room to stretch out and breathe.

I was disappointed in Us the first time I listened to it - it felt like a lot of mid-tempo noodling failing to resolve into the shape of, y'know, songs. But it really, really rewards repeated listening (and careful edits - b'bye Barry). Coming out the other side, it strikes me as, well, mature PG prog - the musicianship is at the usual insanely high level, but meticulous studiocraft trumps virtuoso pyrotechnics. There's no catharsis, no release, no \m/ moments, but there's an extraordinary density to the tracks, and a gradual release of tension that fulfills formally the album's Big Concept.

So, er, classic then.

the rest of it... well the man really has been through hell it seems and I hope he's doing okay.

Judging from the recent profile of Real World Studios in TapeOp, the answer could be...quite a long time.

Sounds like they keep a lot of old tech running in his personal studio to deal with the older material that is still in progress.

As, for "Up". Well, I have most stuff prior to it just haven't been convinced that it is worth my time to give it a listen.

Well, see, that's where we've always differed on this one. What gets me, er, up about Up isn't ooh ooh how cleanly recorded!, it's how the strange sounds pile up to produce music. Music that moves me. To me the whole "oh therapy" angle plays just as much as sophistry, and seems a weak excuse for not putting in the time that this one needs.

I won't quote lyrics again, but there's nothing notably therapized about "No Way Out" - it's immediate and keenly observed with the strange objectivity that takes hold in shocked states of emergency (and yes, I'm invoking O'Hara on purpose dammit!), and then it offers up the Goldfish Analogy, and breaks my heart if not yours.

In the Gabriel catalog I find the closest analog in Security, except where Security explores the prog potential of Olatunji, Doudou Ndiaye Rose, et al, Up works with texture and layer. It's got the same long tracks, dearth of catchy choruses, and discovery of small pleasures in a change of key or the construction of an unexpected new addition (compare e.g. the transcendent conclusion of "Sky Blue" with the codas of "Wallflower" (I will do what I can do...) or "San Jacinto" (we will walk... on the land...)) The pleasure's less visceral (there's certainly no "I Have The Touch" here), but no less pleasure for that.

Come to think, the crazy teakettle sound that puts "More Than This" over the top for me has a lot in common with the Fairlight/Iron Lung sound at the end of "San Jacinto"...

So yeah, the Up I have on my shelf is a cool, creepy, thanatomanic classic. All it requires is that I find as much jouissance in Peter Gabriel the prog composer/explorer as I do in Peter Gabriel the arch pop saboteur. Maybe you got a bad pressing? ::grin::

You're spot-on regarding the bass playing on No Way Out, though I don't think it's Tony. If I remember right, there's a guest playing those thick, delicious acoustic accents on double bass.

And you're right that it rewards repeat spins. After a couple of weeks grousing about how lame the album was, I suddenly found its pulse one evening listening to Growing Up, which is just plain wicked in its slow, dense intensity.

I think Roger very OTM with prog-composer title. PG's "pop" songs are so much mood pieces these days that it makes the mundane deficiencies of drek like "The Barry Williams Show" that much more obvious.

Cool find on the internet: outtakes from "Passion!"

Wow, forgot how weird/scary "Darkness" is!!!

Where?! I need this!

You are correct, sir! The double bass is credited to Danny Thompson.

Shame on me (and I mean this) for just assuming that all tasty basswork on a Levin-credited track must be Levin's.

as it is, it's dreadful, with a few lovely moments.

This thread still hasn't inspired me to fish out "Up" and give it another shot. Oh well.