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Peter Gabriel - So Audio CD

A fair review of the Peter Gabriel "So" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Peter Gabriel reviews here, or go back to the Peter Gabriel tabs.

Band: Peter Gabriel
Title: So
Rating:

Release Date: 1990-10-25
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Red Rain 2: Sledgehammer 3: Don't Give Up 4: That Voice Again 5: In Your Eyes 6: Mercy Street 7: Big Time 8: We Do What We're Told (Milgram's 37) 9: This Is the Picture (Excellent Birds)

Great Choice for a Classic
Thise, plus the excellent service I have always found in Amazon guarantees that this will be a truly satisfactory aquisition. For those who love the classics, it is not necessary to know much more before you purchase an item like So, by Peter Gabriel. .

And I greet them with the wildest smile

1987 was a huge year in so many ways for music. We knew Peter was going to deliver something truly awesome after Security. The '80s would not have been the decade they were without this record. The production stellar. The musicians were the finest around. The sounds were high tech and world beat. They all came together. I will never forget this record and the tour that followed. peter delivered a blistering Red Rain at Amensty. .

Peter Gabriel's biggest rock solo album is still one of the best albums in rock history 20 plus years on

The year 1986 was the year of Genesis past and present. Former Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel released his fifth studio solo rock album entitled So in May of 1986. Whilst Peter released So, his former Genesis bandmate guitarist Steve Hackett released his hit collaboration with Yes guitarist Steve Howe called GTR's self-titled album. Also, Hackett and Gabriel's ex-colleages the rest of Genesis (singer/drummer Phil Collins, keyboard player Tony Banks and bass player/guitarist Mike Rutherford) released the hugely successful Invisible Touch (see review).
A month before Invisible Touch, Gabriel released So which was a year in the making but was well worth the time it took to create this now classic to rock history. It was four years since his last solo album (1982's fourth self-titled album which was released with the title Security here in the US at the request of his US label Geffen).
This time, Gabriel and his supreme team of session players, including the reliable Tony Levin on bass and Chapman Stick plus David Rhodes on guitar are joined Police drummer Stewart Copeland and drummers Manu Katche and Rick Marotta.
The thunderous "Red Rain" is a stellar opener to this album and is possibly one of his best solo tracks of the 1980s. Next is the smash hit "Sledgehammer" (with Gabriel going a bit funky on the R&B thing) and was rightfully a #1 hit. In a strange twist of fate, it KO-ed his ex-bandmembers' "Invisible Touch" single out of #1 in the US. Also this track's video was groundbreaking with its animation effects. Next is the excellent duet with British singer/songwriter Kate Bush called "Don't Give Up" which is a stellar song and one of the best duets I ever heard. We end the first half with the atmospheric sounding "That Voice Again" which was a rock radio hit in the US yet didn't get released to pop radio.
"Mercy Street" starts the second half off (it was "In Your Eyes" but Gabriel changed the CD tracklisting for the remaster) and is a nice piece. We follow with another big hit called "Big Time" which featured Stewart Copeland on drums and was also known for its classic video (similar to "Sledgehammer" with his effects and Claymation). The original vinyl album's closer "We Do What Were Told" is reminiscent of Gabriel's darker late 1970s material. It's brief, lyrically simple, but very, very haunting. The original CD and cassette closer "This Is The Picture" is a terrific, light-groove collaboration with avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson which combined singing with spoken word, and the funky guitar of Nile Rodgers. The original album's second half opener and now album closer "In Your Eyes" is the album's most well known hit. This track was a #1 on US rock radio and is a nice love song and featured The Call's Michael Been and Simple Minds frontman Jim Kerr on backing vocals plus African singer Y'oussor N'Dour helping out at the end.
So became Peter Gabriel's biggest selling solo album reaching #2 on the Billboard album charts and has sold FIVE million copies to date in the US alone. The album was nominated for the Grammy for Album Of The Year, but it lost to Paul Simon's arguable masterpiece Graceland. However, Gabriel did win the MTV Video Music Award Video of the Year for "Sledgehammer" which ironically beat his old Genesis mates' "Land of Confusion" video. Aside sales, So proved Peter Gabriel was a force to be recoked with.
RECOMMENDED! .

Pete goes Collinsian with foreseeably tragicomic results
His solo career prior to this was idiosyncratic and frankly, just plain weird. Believe it or not, this guy has actually written some fairly decent songs, but you won't find any of them here. It wasn't terribly good to begin with and it relied too heavily on the sounds of the era to warrant being regarded as particularly unique, but still songs like "Solsbury Hill" and "Biko" were genuinely good. But then the spell is broken.

I suppose you don't rub shoulders (or in this case knees against shoulders) with the mighty guru of flop-pop, Phil Collins, without learning a few techniques on how to pitch a product that no one sane could conceivably want by making it so sanitized, so lowest common denominator, so glossily over produced, and so commercialized to the point that even the cynics had to get up and boogie.

Prior to this record, PG wasn't selling on the level that I guess he felt he should have been. He must have undoubtedly witnessed the rise to pop prominence of Phil Collins and the three stooges collectively known as Genesis while simultaneously turning more than a little green with envy. It's usually the moneky that does the imitating, but this tour de force of musical quackery finds PG flinging feces as efficaciously as Phillip the chimp ever did.

Well, let's start where it hurts the most. No points for guessing it was "Sledgehammer", a song truly deserving the dubious distinction of being perhaps the worst song ever written, produced, and performed shamelessly and seemingly ad infinitum in a show of public humiliation that would give a masochist something to aspire to. PG finds himself wandering dazed and confused down the precarious corridors of Tom Jones territory on this embarrassment. Bad sexual euphemisms from a middle aged man apparently intent on conferring sex symbol status on himself in spite of the nagging suspicion one gets that he probably spends more time apologizing to women after making love to them than anything else.

"Don't Give Up", here our hero employs an old Collinsian trick of trade as he explains what a loser he is while proceeding to weep unashamedly into a woman's skirt (a guest starring Kate Bush). This latter element is unfamiliar in Collins' bag of tricks and I think that's because most of us assume he probably couldn't get a woman anyway. I believe PG composed this trite, pseudo-inspirational ditty with the expectation that people would find it uplifting and encouraging. In a manner of speaking it is, I guess, insofar as one can be eternally grateful that they aren't Peter Gabriel.

"Red Rain", not a terrible song in and of itself. It suffers from really bad production and a really bad 80's sound. The lryics try hard to save it, but fail dismally. Later live versions would however find this track redeemed to some extent.

"Big Time", sort a declaration of intent. I suspect PG knew what he was doing from the start with this stinking refuse of an album. "Big Time" is our hero apparently daydreaming and frothing at the mouth as he envisages just how much his transformastion to the tried and true Collinsian formula of flop-pop is going to enhance his commercial profile and thusly his pockets. A very serious contender for worst song of the decade, along side its hideous sibling, "Sledgehammer".

"In Your Eyes", there are certainly far worse moments on the album than this track but that of course is hardly a ringing endorsement. PG scrapes the bottom of the barrel once again for Collinsian tricks and comes up with a can't miss approach, a love song so vapid and emotionally cliched and empty that it would make Mick Hucknell blush. The only silver lining here is that the song is wisely kept under control at about 5 and a half minutes while live performances have seen this carnage carried out for 11 plus minutes to the chagrin of all but the deaf or comatose. This is also an example of PG's growing interest in African percussion, highlighting that he abuses musical stylings the world over with equal opportunity.

The rest of the album is just filler and I'd be surprised if PG himself would even recognize the titles of his own dubious ventures into the domain of the swill, so bravely pioneered by one, Mr. Phil Collins.

Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So!
There's a great blend of textures, feelings and moods, and I feel it's the most consistent Gabriel solo album I've heard. So, Peter Gabriel's 1986 album, his fifth official studio record, is probably my favourite Peter Gabriel album.

There are a lot of talented guest musicians on this album. There's Stuart Copeland's distinctive hi-hats in "Red Rain", Tony Levin's often quirky bass on tracks like "Sledgehammer", a gentle Kate Bush in the reassuring "Don't Give Up", a spirited Laurie Anderson on "This is the Picture" (I must get into her stuff one day). There's even a backing vocal by world musician Youssou N'dour on the vividly emotional "In Your Eyes".

The textures of the tracks, though produced in a similar way, evoke different things. "Sledgehammer" and "Big Time", with their slick poppy production, for me evoke the skyscrapers of the big city, while tracks like the soothing "Mercy Street" conjure up an earthier quality, mainly thanks to Peter Gabriel's vocals. His singing is top notch here, big and bold and yet vulnerable when it needs to be.

The lyrical subject matter focuses a great deal on relationships, particularly in times of trouble, in a variety of ways. There are other subjects covered too. There is the story of the man who wants everything bigger and better in "Big Time" and the tribute to troubled poet Anne Sexton in "Mercy Street", plus the image rich "Red Rain" and "This is the Picture".

As with all the 2002 remasters, the booklet comes with a booklet filled with photos, this time of the So Tour, behind-the scenes of the Sledgehammer video and of the recording of the album. There's also, as always, full lyrics and a list of who plays what (though I think some people are listed as doing things on the wrong tracks, like it says that Laurie Anderson does a guest vocal on track 9, which is "In Your Eyes", rather than on "This is the Picture").

It's probably Peter Gabriel's most accessible album, so I'd recommend it to anyone who is curious about his solo career, though all of his material is worth checking out to a greater and lesser extent.

You can see a complete list of all Peter Gabriel discography, or go back to the Peter Gabriel tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.