12 Overlooked Pieces of Awesome is an article series where each month Flint hopelessly rambles about an album in his collection that he dearly loves, even when they have their flaws. Each of the albums chosen tends to be usually overlooked, or forgotten, in one way or another and thus this article series aims to give an alternative view on said albums, or simply just bring something a bit less known to the spotlight.

Peter Gabriel – Up (2002)

What can you expect from an album that was nearly ten years in the making? An album where the artist needed to take his time simply because the technology didn’t suit his needs to fulfill his vision. An album where one of the guest stars ended up actually dying during all the years between agreeing to do his part and recording it, which resulted in having to use a recording of his voice from an early live version. An album where you know that each and every one of those years was spent nitpicking each little sound, each production detail, everything. Overproduction is a phenomenon where a fairly alright song is covered in all sorts of production gimmicks and added sheen in order to make it sound better than it is. While a far rarer event than some might want to argue, it still happens. The key is in having a person who knows just what he’s doing handling the whole process.

Peter Gabriel is that sort of person. To most he’s known from the 80’s massive hit single Sledgehammer or the first singer of Genesis. After departing from Genesis due to creative differences, Gabriel’s had a slow and steady solo career that’s taken him through many guises and styles whenever he hasn’t been hopping all around the world and collaborating with regional superstars all around the world, in search for an amazing new sound to discover. After the gigantic hit album So (featuring the said Sledgehammer) Gabriel became busier and busier with his extra-curricular activities and his solo albums began growing sizeable gaps in time between one another. The man was always working on them, but because he was working on a billion other things at the same time, things simply took time. Between 1992’s somber and warm Us and his first (and seemingly only) studio album of the 00’s, 2002’s Up, Gabriel released two soundtracks and worked all around the world with countless other things. But from the very first listen of Up it’s clear that the man’s claims that he indeed did start work on its songs shortly after Us are very much true. Hell, Gabriel has also said that Up was already primarily ready around 1998 but he still took several years to apply finishing touches to it. If there’s an album that can truly claim to have the perfect sound crafted with precise touch, it’s Up.

Up was made for headphones or a high quality surround system. Countless little details buzz in everywhere in various volumes, all combining into one large and immensely deep sound. The aural space is crowded but not choked – each little piece knows its place exactly and never outstays its purpose. The more listens you give to the album the more of the details you start picking up, each expanding the experience from there-on-in as the little tidbits become more noticable afterwards. It’s an album that’s a hifist’s wet dream, all precise sounds going from speaker to speaker, channel to channel.

For an album with such a long gestation period, it’s equally fitting that the album itself is grand and massive. Outside its immensely immersive sound world, Up’s 10 songs tend to take up somewhere between six to eight minutes all the time. The only exception, in all ways, is the closing “The Drop” that delivers its message in mere three minutes and with just Gabriel’s gruff, age-worn voice and a lone piano. Yet for all the extended lengths and emphasis on how the music sounds, there’s very little space for instrumental sections on Up. Most moments are filled with Gabriel’s singing with the music staying as a vast, expansive backing for his voice. Up’s instrumental wankery is the best kind: immensely skilled playing with great care taken to how it sounds but never robbing the attention with pretentious attention-hogging masturbation.

Growing Up (single version)

As much as the singing takes space, it’s important that the content means something. If we treat the oft-flimsy term “concept album” with more vague definitions, Up could be seen as one. While there’s no large connectivity that combines every single subject matter presented on the album, there’s enough to form a backbone: mortality, either just by mere coincidence or the ponderings of an aging man. As Up progresses, similar topics of life, its end and the uncertain afterlife keep popping up. “Darkness” deals with fears and insecurities, “More Than This” ponders on the afterlife, “No Way Out” despairs on the exact moment of a loved one’s demise while “I Grieve” talks about the shock and coping afterwards (a song that was born out of Gabriel realising that he’s written about a lot of things but not that specific subject, and decided to fill the gap). “Growing Up” charts through the whole life from birth to death in cyclical bookends. If we are truthful, Gabriel has never been a brilliant lyricist despite doing his job well enough. The lyrics on Up however reveal a man who has grown vastly in skill throughout his career, the poignant and beautiful lyrics wonderfully illustrating vast emotional twists with beautiful delicacy. They help in making the album what it is – an universally humane musical journey. It’s personal but on a vaster level, touching upon events that sooner or later we’ll all be facing and Gabriel describes them in a way that similarly makes them both detailed enough to be relatable and vague enough to work for everyone.

What Gabriel has always had however is songwriting skill and Up’s 10 songs contain the long-careered man’s best songs, lifted even higher by their technological prowess. “Darkness” would never be as downright frightening and eventually heartwrenchingly beautiful without its sudden jerks in volume levels or the playful interaction of space-filling noise and minimal piano drops. But it is, and as such is a colossal opener full of booming fierceness. The atmospheric gospel soar of “Sky Blue” touches the heart directly and just when you thought nothing could achieve the same effect, the following “No Way Out” aims straight into one’s emotions with the gorgeous melody patterns.  Uncertain wondering if there’s anything out there after we leave our mortal shells has never sounded as positive as it does on the hit-like “More Than This”, “Growing Up” grooves along with a similar hook-filled angle. The now-mandatory Gabriel funk single moment quote is pleased with “The Barry Williams Show”, a groove-a-licious telling of a Springer-esque talk show host that views its subject matter in both a negative and a sadly sympathetic light. It’s also the seeming love-it-or-hate-it moment of the album, though the thought of anyone hating on such a glorious piece of singalong gorgeousness that at the same time matches the tone of the rest of the album perfectly is beyond me. And just as the album begins with a colossal monster of a song, so it ends as well – before the quiet “The Drop” that ends the album in an almost outro-like the fashion, the furious storm called “Signal to Noise” rends the soundscape into a purged desert as the Middle East-influenced track (featuring the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in guest vocals) builds up and finally explodes into a gigantic apocalyptic thunder of string walls and drums pouring down relentlessly.

My definition of Up for a long time has been that it’s an album that makes me feel, all the way in the spine. The reasons why have been well documented by now: the songs, the words and the immaculate sound world that’s gigantic without ever sounding anything less than personal. It’s immense.

If you get into Up and are looking for a great companion piece for it, an absolute must check is the Growing Up Live DVD, recorded during the Up promotion tour. Gabriel’s always been into theatrics and thus his liveshows aren’t your usual “band on stage” variety but moreso performances – same continues with the Up tour. The stage itself is a circle situated right in the middle of the large stadium and as the setlist progresses, both the stage and its composition change. Guest artists enter and disappear from the heart of the circle, Gabriel takes rides with boats, bicycles and a giant Zorb ball, at one point decides the floor is not enough and has a walk upside-down on the ceiling. Even the camera people get to join the trickery as they show the perks of watching these things on DVD (outside the perfect sound and visual quality in itself), with camera playing along in a trickster-like fashion on several tracks (especially Barry Williams Show). It’s a fantastic concert DVD with a brilliant setlist (outside the tepid “Animal Nation” and its failed audience singalong) and excellent performances.

Signal to Noise (live)

Buy Up from Amazon: UK / US

MP3: Darkness
MP3: No Way Out

Tags: 12 Overlooked Pieces of Awesome, peter gabriel

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 26th, 2009 at 5:35 pm and is filed under Retrospective. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.