Album of the day: Peter Gabriel, “Peter Gabriel 3”

Peter Gabriel, “Peter Gabriel 3” (Cd Virgin LC 3098)

Here’s another album whose dark and chilling atmospheres will probably not be very suitable for the current holidays, but how can you recommend quality albums without including one of the capital works in rock music? Impossible. This is a work that, more than forty years after its release, still sounds prophetically current, and surpasses in creativity and audacity everything that is now produced in the pop/rock field.

“Peter Gabriel 3” caused a real shock upon its release in 1980, leaving fans and critics stunned by the expressive violence with which the English singer came out, defying all the rules of the market and jeopardizing his career with an extremely experimental album . Already with the second solo album Gabriel had definitively left behind the image of the progressive rock singer still linked to his past with Genesis; that work produced by Robert Fripp introduced for the first time aggressive and distortion-rich sounds, but “Peter Gabriel 3” far surpasses him in its implacable pace that digs mercilessly into the darkest meanders of the human psyche starting with “Intruder”, which on the pounding riff of Phil Collins’ filtered drums (even the mixing and recording of the album present truly innovative characteristics) sees Gabriel’s hoarse and insinuating voice describe a malignant, dangerous, who crawls into homes at night to carry out heinous acts after cutting the telephone wires.

The lyrics, splendid and full of an expressive urgency that Gabriel himself would never find again later, speak of political violence and torture (“Biko”), total disorientation (“No Self Control”), marginalization (“Not One Of Us”), paranoia and cynicism (“I Don’t Remember”), mental illnesses (“Lead a Normal Life”), wars ironically played out between children (“Games Without Frontiers”) and even Kennedy’s murder seen through the eyes of Lee Harvey Oswald (“Family Snapshot”).

A real theater of war set up by Gabriel together with a team of excellent musicians such as Tony Levin, Larry Fast, Dave Gregory, Jerry Marotta, Morris Pert and Kate Bush. Hugh Padgham’s production, with its cavernous, electric sounds saturated with disturbing resonances, completes everything.

Carlo Boccadoro, composer and conductor, was born in Macerata in 1963. He lives and works in Milan. He collaborates with soloists and orchestras in different parts of the world. He is the author of numerous books on musical topics.

This text is taken from “Lunario della musica: A record for every day of the year” published by Einaudi, courtesy of the author and the publisher.