Peter Gabriel (1980)

This was Peter Gabriel's third self-titled album in a row—at the time he likened the naming strategy in interviews to "Time" magazine, as a regularly published periodical ... or something equally incoherent (it's also known as "III" and "Melt," the latter for the cover image). I think it's the best thing he ever did outside of Genesis. Make that the best thing he ever did, period. It was my favorite album of 1980, certainly in terms of gross numbers of hours spent with it, an everyday (or even twice-daily) album for most of that summer. At some point, likely because of fatigue, I left it behind and had not really heard much of it since until I sat down with it again recently. As usual, things get a little mixed up because it's come to bear a lot of memories of the time, good and bad. But yeah, I still think it's pretty great. I am reminded that Steely Dan and Todd Rundgren were two major favorites of mine shortly before punk-rock sent a distortion field of discontinuity across my tastes. There's a case to be made that this fits with either or maybe both, but as much as anything it's a studio production of impressive sophistication, Steve Lillywhite's breakthrough effort, and I think it was those earlier tastes that drew me in here. The drums are pushed up whomping big—it's Phil Collins, sitting at the feet and studying closely the style of Gabriel's singing, paying for his education with a day job drumming. Others on hand for the festivities include Kate Bush, Robert Fripp, and Paul Weller. All sounds are filtered within an inch of their lives, floating by in sweet layers, including allusive scraps and fragments that function the way samples would later and often stick and/or provide the pleasure as much as any of the main features. Gabriel wrote everything, from the little throwaway "Start" (the third song in) to the seven-and-a-half-minute album-closer "Biko," perhaps the most obvious example of a political consciousness and sensibility that Gabriel was beginning to entertain, with some ferocity even. "Family Snapshot" has a foot in the '70s fascinations with political assassination (think Taxi Driver or Nashville), a kind of studied mythologizing of the familiar patterns, marked equally by its horrors of them and a romanticized longing for more. (Funny how much this kind of thing dwindled away after the attempts, successful and unsuccessful respectively, on John Lennon and Ronald Reagan. Or maybe it really was just a '70s thing.) "Games Without Frontiers," a rebuke of the virulent international military adventuring by the vestiges of colonial powers, was the kinda-sorta hit. No doubt altogether too serious for American radio. "Biko" always seemed a bit long to me at the end, but mostly I listened to the album then the way I have recently, from start to finish, with a good deal of pleasure and various attractions taking their turns stepping forward and making themselves known. Worth visiting again and again, still.