PLAYING FOR TIME

Have to confess that, in the beginning of this song, I convinced myself of being listening to one of those Hollywood oriented title songs that for years Peter used to write for soundtracks. And it's not such a bad thing, as the man singing on piano lines really delivers a unique sound of great class and quality, but one maybe can be tempted to miss the sheer emotional charge and the sonic assault of milestones such as Family Snapshot, just to put an example taken from his glory days as a solo artist.

But here we have that, in the last possible minute, that Peter of yore we learn to know and love really delivers the goods: on the line "One by one the voices silenced ..." not only the voice scalates high in dynamics and register, but also the band and the orchestra (nice string arrangement!) leave their unforgettable mark in this song, as well as in our musical memory.

So, building on the reflective, brooding calm of the first piano-ladden part, the final charge achieves the impact that, we hope, Peter Gabriel will never cease to seek, and re-create always in a new form.

In the end, I think Playing For Time is a winning hand for him.

Title stamped GABRIEL, I immediately think of pieces of film such as 'Long Walk Home' for this line of piano on which Peter sings as before. it's pure, his voice can still rise high, a hunting horn and I'm waiting for the chorus of the title that doesn't come; it doesn't matter the bucolic, military orchestra does its job easily and magnificently before the starting break, a solemn rise where the sound tries to gain time to stop getting old.

So if it weren't for the Archangel, we would find it good or marvellous, a hymn of a war campaign, of proven retirement or a melancholic song with a smattering of violin flights? A bit of 'Here Comes The Flood', a bit of 'Family Snapshot', a lot of love from Peter GABRIEL who still wants to speak to us by composing his hymn to life.

The problem of a single is to captivate to try to listen to even more of it; the problem of a single is also to capture the atmosphere of an album through a single title, something impossible unless you put emotion on each title; here the emotion is there with a big E.