Peter Gabriel (1st LP) CD

Personnel includes: Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush (vocals); Robert Fripp (guitar); Roy Bittan, Larry Fast (keyboards); Tony Levin (bass); Phil Collins (drums); Dick Wagner, Jim Maelen, Steve Hunter, Allan Schwartzberg.
Recorded at The Soundstage, Toronto, Canada.
Digitally remastered by Tony Cousins (Metropolis).
Personnel includes: Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush (vocals); Robert Fripp (guitar); Roy Bittan, Larry Fast (keyboards); Tony Levin (bass); Phil Collins (drums); Dick Wagner, Jim Maelen, Steve Hunter, Allan Schwartzberg.
All tracks have been digitally remastered.
This is a Super Audio CD playable only on Super Audio players.
Personnel includes: Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush (vocals); Robert Fripp (guitar); Roy Bittan, Larry Fast (keyboards); Tony Levin (bass); Phil Collins (drums); Dick Wagner, Jim Maelen, Steve Hunter, Allan Schwartzberg.
Recorded at The Soundstage, Toronto, Canada.
Peter Gabriel tells why he left Genesis in "Solsbury Hill," the key track on his 1977 solo debut. Majestically opening with an acoustic guitar, the song finds Gabriel's talents gelling, as the words and music feed off each other, turning into true poetry. It stands out dramatically on this record, not because the music doesn't work, but because it brilliantly illustrates why Gabriel had to fly on his own. Though this is undeniably the work of the same man behind The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, he's turned his artiness inward, making his music coiled, dense, vibrant. There is still some excess, naturally, yet it's the sound of a musician unleashed, finally able to bend the rules as he wishes. That means there are less atmospheric instrumental sections than there were on his last few records with Genesis, as the unhinged bizarreness in the arrangements, compositions, and productions, in tracks such as the opener "Moribund the Burgermeister" vividly illustrate. He also has turned sleeker, sexier, capable of turning out a surging rocker like "Modern Love." If there is any problem with Peter Gabriel, it's that Gabriel is trying too hard to show the range of his talents, thereby stumbling occasionally with the doo wop-to-cabaret "Excuse Me" or the cocktail jazz of "Waiting for the Big One" (or, the lyric "you've got me cookin'/I'm a hard-boiled egg" on "Humdrum"). Still, much of the record teems with invigorating energy (as on "Slowburn," or the orchestral-disco pulse of "Down the Dolce Vita"), and the closer "Here Comes the Flood" burns with an anthemic intensity that would later become his signature in the '80s. Yes, it's an imperfect album, but that's a byproduct of Gabriel's welcome risk-taking -- the very thing that makes the album work, overall. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
In 1977, two years after leaving Genesis, Peter Gabriel emerged as a solo artist with the first of three records entitled PETER GABRIEL. He was anxious for a change of musical direction, but after years of fronting one of the foremost art-rock outfits of the era, he hadn't exactly lost his taste for the dramatic. On his own, Gabriel was free to explore his own personal obsessions. Consequently the work is rife with images of isolation, paranoia, and the apocalypse. Aided by the London Symphony Orchestra and the cavernous production of Bob Ezrin (Kiss, Alice Cooper), the record reaches dramatic peaks of symphonic rock.
Musically, Gabriel was clearly in experimental mode. The collection opens with the cheery yet menacing "Moribund the Burgermeister" (which sounds like a twisted fairy tale), followed by the hit "Solsbury Hill," a lilting acoustic ballad which obliquely addresses Gabriel's departure from Genesis and is an enduring fixture on FM radio. "Modern Love," with its larynx-shredding vocal, rocks as hard as anything Gabriel ever recorded. The just plain odd "Excuse Me," Gabriel's sole foray into barbershop quartet territory, has old-world charm, and "Here Comes the Flood" is Gabriel at his doomiest.

Remastered

Entertainment Weekly (7/12/02, pp.84-5) - "...Reveals a surprisingly logical progression...Gabriel sharpens his writing and expands his sonic scope with every release..." Rating: A
Q (6/02, p.137) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...[Gabriel's] music holds up rather well..."
Mojo (Publisher) (6/02, p.126) - "...Quaintly raced off shouting...that it was different [than Genesis]..."