Looking back on the musical highs and lows of 2002, it’s safe to say that no album had a larger impact on my ear canals than the otherworldly squeals of Up, the latest effort from experimental rock shaman Peter Gabriel. While a lion’s share of this “year in review” section focuses on albums that may have slipped through the cracks in another year where popular music just plain stunk, the energy and force of Up and its accompanying tour would be a crime to ignore.
Critics and music buffs are always frothing at the mouth to discover the next rock savior, to be the first to find the next Dylan, the heir apparent to Coltrane, the best thing since Radiohead. This voracious search for a new sensation allowed Up to smack us all upside the head at first listen, courtesy of the bone-jarring dynamics of the opening track, “Darkness.” With each distorted, screaming refrain, Mr. Gabriel reminds us that he’s still kicking, and that middle age hasn’t made him any smoother around the edges. The rest of the album is just as spellbinding, from the voluptuous harmonies of “Blue Sky” to the spiritual optimism of “More Than This” and the naked, confessional piano of “The Drop.”
Even though I liked to tell strangers that I was a Gabriel aficionado (using words like “eclectic” and “ebullient” to describe him), the truth was that I was painfully unfamiliar with his work, and in no way knowledgeable about his back catalog. It’s true that in the years that Peter ruled the charts and won over critics’ hearts, I was listening to Tesla and wearing a different Metallica shirt each day of the week, growing a limp mullet and stealing cans of Miller High Life from the fridge. So, if I was going to live up to all of the lies, I had some catching up to do. Given my ignorance, I had fairly lukewarm expectations for the artist’s first album in a decade, and after my harsh conversion, I was still in a full-fledged state of sonic shock last December, as I traveled up to Toronto to see the Growing Up tour, once again in the dark and prepared for a rude awakening.
The lights dimmed as Gabriel climbed up the steps of the circular stage to perform a solo piano/vocal version of “Here Comes The Flood,” from his 1977 debut album. Dressed like your everyday industrial-ninja-wizard, the man was clad in some sort of heavy black jumpsuit, full of obtuse pockets and unnecessary zippers. The soulful emoting of “Flood” faded away, and the lights rose to reveal Gabriel’s sensational band, which abruptly ripped into an especially scary rendition of “Darkness.” The show unfolded in a way unlike any I’ve seen: after Gabriel and his back-up singer walked upside-down under the rigging of a retractable stage that was lifted and dropped countless times throughout the performance, a gigantic white egg was dramatically lowered from an opening in the ceiling. A few songs later, the covering was stripped from the massive zygote by an invisible force, revealing a translucent plastic orb, from which all colors of light bounced off. Then came a truly thrilling high point: for the song “Growing Up,” it was lowered to the floor. Gabriel then proceeded to crawl inside a tiny opening in the clear, starry ball, stuck his feet and hands into some stirrups within, and became some sort of mystical hamster, running around the periphery of the stage and singing the song in a huge, glittery sphere.
With inspired renditions of “Sledgehammer,” “Shock The Monkey” and “In Your Eyes,” Gabriel managed to pretty much do it all: for the fanatics, plenty of strange metaphors and astounding visuals, and for the casual listener, a healthy dose of hits, performed with surprising vigor.
Upon leaving the arena and shuffling through the icy, ten-degree Canadian evening, a cliché mostly reserved for embittered old men kept running through my head: “They just don’t make ‘em like they used to.” Of all of the insanely overpriced rock tours I’ve seen in recent years, I can’t think of a single one that was especially awe-inspiring in its presentation. (This includes all of the fresh young bucks on the scene, too, with their ripped jeans and their unkept hair.) The 52-year-old Gabriel is one of a precious few rock giants with enough dramatic sense to actually put on a show, in every sense of the word. Up exhibits this innate sense of artistic expression, one that certainly wasn’t created with heavy airplay in mind (nine out of the ten songs clock in at over six minutes long). Above all else, it made this lying, crotchety old buzzard a convert to the Gabriel sect in the first song, and that’s sayin’ a lot, because most artists that charge $80 for a concert ticket tend to give me a rash.
Appeared in Issue One, 2003, of Traffic East.