Posts Tagged ‘ art rock ’

Album of the Week 48-2023: Peter Gabriel – i/o


While it doesn’t quite have the reputation that ‘Chinese Democracy’ or ‘Black Messiah’ had, ‘i/o’ has been about twenty years in the making. It probably helps that Peter Gabriel had been on tour and releasing things in the intervening years, but ‘i/o’ was originally slated for release as early as 2004. Since Gabriel is known for making carefully crafted, multi-layered albums to begin with, the lengthy process hasn’t hurt the album nearly as much as it would have if a more conventional rock band would have done something similar. In fact, ‘i/o’ is everything one would want from a Peter Gabriel album.

Given the lengthy conception of the album, it is quite remarkable that ‘i/o’ sounds like a fairly logical continuation of 2002’s ‘Up’. Some of the songs were written around the same time, and it shows. ‘i/o’ is full of the clever songwriting that comes from the grey area between art pop and art rock Gabriel is known for. The world music influences are there, but they are a bit more subtle. Gabriel and his musicians – some of which he has been working with for over four decades – alternate between songs that feel like they were written for a live band and more electronically enhanced studio-based arrangements.

Interestingly, as dense and well thought-out as the arrangements are, the songs on ‘i/o’ are fairly memorable and accessible. Gabriel does throw the odd curveball at the listener, such as the sparse prog-funk of ‘The Court’ or the eighties new wave extravaganza of ‘Road to Joy’, but even those are very listenable. The majority of the album consists of very introspective, yet emotionally intense ballads, catchy alternative pop and songs with subtle washes of synthesizers enhanced by Gabriel’s voice and varying degrees of electronic percussion. And because Gabriel’s sense of musical direction is so strong, it all works.

One thing that does bug me about ‘i/o’ is that it is offered in two different mixes: the clean and open “Bright-Side Mix” and the more hazy, bottom-heavy “Dark-Side Mix”. It reeks of an indecisiveness that an album so long in the making should not have. Especially because most of the tracks have one specific mix that clearly is the more appropriate one. The low-key ballads and more electronics-oriented songs like ‘Love Can Heal’, ‘And Still’ and ‘So Much’ profit from the darker mix, while the more accessible live drums-oriented material like ‘Olive Tree’ sounds best with a brighter mix.

Despite all that, ‘i/o’ is much better than I expected it would be. At age 73, Gabriel’s warm voice is still as good as ever and the songwriting is excellent. Those who have followed Peter Gabriel throughout his career will have no trouble adjusting to ‘i/o’. Anyone who mainly knows him from the hits on ‘So’ might need some time due to nothing being as immediate as the likes of ‘Sledgehammer’ or ‘Red Rain’, but even then, you might fall for the album. Seeing as it took him so long to make the album, ‘i/o’ might just be Gabriel’s final original work, but it’s one to be proud of.

Recommended tracks: ‘Love Can Heal’, ‘The Court’, ‘Panopticom’, ‘So Much’

2023
12/03
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Album of the Week 35-2018: Acid Black Cherry – Black List


Solo projects are an odd phenomenon. Technically, they could highlight a vision someone is not allowed to display in their main band, but they are often a disjointed mess. Acid Black Cherry’s debut album ‘Black List’ has all the symptoms of the latter – a rotating cast of musicians, a wide range of styles – but ends up being much closer to the former. The strict direction of main man and sole songwriter yasu keeps the whole thing from spiraling out of control. Realizing the importance of the first strike, ‘Black List’ is a minor J-rock classic and likely yasu’s best work yet.

In essence, the music on ‘Black List’ is not as far removed from yasu’s former band Janne Da Arc as one might expect. The differences are almost cosmetic rather than fundamental. On ‘Black List’, Acid Black Cherry is somewhat heavier and considerably more theatrical than Janne was, but the focus is still mainly on highly melodic rock songs with instantly hummable choruses, energetic but not too complicated riff work and a strategic use of light-and-shade workings. The approach is not too dissimilar to what Gackt has been doing for the last decade, but notably less predictable and therefore better.

While it would be easy to blame the immense artistic value of ‘Black List’ on the contributions of big names in J-rock – including Luna Sea’s Sugizo, La’cryma Christi’s Shuse and Siam Shade’s Daita and Jun-ji – the truth is that yasu’s songwriting and arrangements are simply really good. Arrangements are worth mentioning, because it’s exactly the fantastic use of keyboards and strings that adds some class to the surprisingly dark, menacing nature of the fanatastic opener ‘Sins’ and the bass and horn arrangements that lend an authentic jazzy edge to the manic ‘Black Cherry’, as wildly as it rocks most of the time.

On ‘Black List’, the genre-hopping is its forte rather than its flaw. The dark, dangerous vibe that made me love ‘Sins’ so much is revived on ‘Murder License’, while ‘Bit Stupid’ is an infectious, breezy and funky pop rocker. ‘Fuyu No Maboroshi’ is a particularly theatrical ballad, while ‘Shojo No Inori’ is a fun melodic hardrocker that would not have sounded out of place on one of Janne Da Arc’s later albums. Occasionally yasu’s particularly light and thin voice is a little grating, but overall, it’s remarkable how well it works on the harder rocking tracks on ‘Black List’.

Despite releasing more quality material throughout the years, Acid Black Cherry would never again release an album as good as ‘Black List’. Some serious overproduction drags most of their albums down, though none of the original albums is less than enjoyable. Though a lot of effort has gone into the production and arrangements of ‘Black List’, this album truly is enhanced by the effort. There is a bit of a risk that western rock fans might find yasu’s voice a little off-putting, but the fact remains that ‘Black List’ is a fantastic album. It even sounds like one rather than a loose collection of songs. That alone is already rather impressive within the J-rock realm.

Recommended tracks: ‘Sins’, ‘Shojo No Inori’, ‘Murder License’

2018
09/02
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Album of the Week 10-2016: Peter Gabriel – Peter Gabriel 3


After two albums of progressive, yet still pretty conventional music – just how conventional an album that involves Peter Gabriel and Robert Fripp can really be is open for debate – Gabriel really immersed himself into synthesizers, African rhythms, drums without cymbals and proto-electronic music on his third self-titled record, nicknamed ‘Melt’ for its album cover. It says enough about how ahead of his time Gabriel was that this album – released in 1980 – sounds like it’s from the mid to late eighties. But even disregarding the album’s progressive nature, the song material itself is among the best Gabriel has ever recorded.

Gabriel has always danced on the line between progressive and accessible and though ‘So’ – an amazing album in its own right – was his mainstream breakthrough, not one other album of Gabriel’s balances out those extremes so perfectly. There’s a lot of darkness in the lyrics on the album, but Gabriel and his producer Steve Lillywhite always find a way to give the songs a hook. That’s probably how the cynical ‘Games Without Frontiers’, which spots a distinct guest performance by Kate Bush, became this album’s unlikely hit song. In fact, it was his most successful single at the time.

There’s not really anything like a common sound throughout the album. Though apart from the somewhat upbeat ‘And Through The Wire’, most of the songs are dark and rhythmical. The maniacal ‘I Don’t Remember’ with its fantastic Chapman stick work courtesy of Tony Levin and ‘Not One Of Us’ bring sound like they’re built from the same artistic ideas as what the Talking Heads were doing at the time, whereas the tuned ideophones of the brilliantly structured ‘No Self Control’ seem to prelude his later forays into African-inspired music. Speaking of the African inspiration: there’s ‘Biko’, Gabriel’s stately, brooding tribute to the anti-apartheid activist.

My personal favorite of the record is the bleak, dark opening track ‘Intruder’. With it’s pronounced drum pattern – Gabriel’s former Genesis mate Phil Collins and his first experiment with gated drum sounds – and dissonant main riff, as well as the subdued danger in Gabriel’s voice make this song amazingly atmospheric. Nightmare fuel maybe, but it’s a great mood-setter for an album that isn’t all that cheerful anyway. The somewhat more conventional sounding ‘Family Snapshot’ is another highlight. It builds from a piano ballad to several fantastic climaxes and as a result, it has a sense of drama that is rare in progressive music.

Of course, Peter Gabriel would become more famous with subsequent albums, but while his first two self-titled albums had a couple of amazing moments, this is the first album to fully capture his unique and as of yet unequaled artistic vision. While not without hooks, this masterpiece is rather an album that slowly reveals its secrets to the listener through multiple spins and in a way, those are usually the albums with the largest replay value. Highly recommended to everyone who likes profound, truly progressive music and doesn’t mind a cynical, gloomy observation every now and then.

Recommended tracks: ‘Intruder’, ‘Family Snapshot’, ‘I Don’t Remember’

2016
03/13
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