Up opens with "Darkness", which is either the long-lost theme from Legend, or a raid on "Kashmir", "No Surprises" and Brian Eno's Apollo. Maybe it's both, but if nothing else it perfectly outlines the binary reaction people have toward Peter Gabriel's music. Half of us wince at an arch-martyr's global empathy ballads; half submit to a voice as honest and evocative as pop music has unearthed. This review is for the latter class. Peter Gabriel is not Sting.

Though his genesis is infamous, Gabriel dashed the twin specters of costumed, maypole-dancing prog and the preposterous conceptual characters employed in his stint as lead singer in just two albums' time. "Solsbury Hill" indicated a flair for dramatic, sweeping pop music, but most of his early work is flush with the British rock and roll of the 1970s-- the cheeky wordplay in "Modern Love" and "On the Air" evidence a young man still possessed of more than enough ego. On his third self-titled album, commonly referred to as Scratch, Gabriel branched out with two pivotal cuts that would define his polar interests. The twisted, elated choruses of his toy soldier smash "Games without Frontiers" revealed his ability to synthesize twenty or thirty genres into a recognizable pop song. The record's finale, the 7½-minute dirge "Biko", was a political touchstone in the 1980s, and epitomizes the drum-circle anthems you've heard in any number of films over the last ten or fifteen years.

After conquering both world music (1988's Passion) and pop (1986's So), Gabriel spent vast amounts of time and money on the WOMAD (World Of Music Arts & Dance) festival he inaugurated in 1982, and his recording studio and imprint, Real World. He returned to pop music with Us in 1992, then mounted an overwrought touring production that summoned all the drama and mystery of a role-playing video game. After a long hiatus, his two recent recordings-- 2000's Ovo and this year's Long Walk Home (soundtrack to an Australian indie film)-- weren't even given domestic US releases. Suffice to say Peter Gabriel has been under the popular radar for a decade, and as the lead single from Up ("The Barry Williams Show") is both more egregious and revolting than his last album's uncomfortably obvious single ("Kiss That Frog"), it's unlikely we'll see his graying goatee anytime soon. Up has one other cheap moment: "More Than This", an upgrade of "Love to Be Loved" from Us.

Any easy joke about Gabriel's last two album titles will hold water, as established artists of his caliber tend not to evolve very much, especially in their later years. He borrows from some newer sources on Up-- cue "Signal to Noise", heavily indebted to Björk's "Joga"-- but the first five tracks here are on par with anything you loved about Us. "Growing Up" offers the tongue-in-cheek menacing Gabriel started his career with, laid over a driving rhythm and the usual: one hundred tracks of perfectly positioned, lushly produced melodies. "I Grieve", the song that (alongside the Goo Goo Dolls) sold a pathetic yuppie fantasy film to millions, is finally included in the more dignified surroundings it deserves. A lament to rival "Mercy Street" from So, it caps off the excellent first half of Up.

If I didn't mention that every song on this record, save its closer, is longer than six minutes, it's time to, because at some point during the 7½ minutes of "The Barry Williams Show" or the shapeless "My Head Sounds Like That", Up will start to beat you down. His two least creative compositions-- the aforementioned "More Than This" and "Signal to Noise"-- will entertain only the least critical in Gabriel's audience. "Drop" (a brief, solo piano tune) is positioned as a naked rejoinder to the record's melodramatic string crescendo ("Signal to Noise"), but the deafening excess of its predecessor has dulled our senses; by the time Up ends, you'll be hard pressed to remember a note of its parting lilt.

-Chris Ott, October 18th, 2002