SECRET WORLD LIVE

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Peter Gabriel's work. I think he has some really amazing albums and some real duds. This live double album was recorded in Modena Italy in November 1993 and falls well short of his best work. The first problem is that half the tracks come from one of his weakest albums, US, which saw Gabriel pushing way too far into the pop realm with tripe like "Kiss That Frog." A bigger complaint is that I come to this album after having experienced the much more challenging and interesting work of recent years, UP, and the live video release of the UP tour (and the concert in person). Where the new and old material from the UP tour had bite and imagination, Secret World Live feels like a sing-songey regurgitation of the hits to please the crowd. This is the kind of show where everyone is dancing and singing along to the well-known choruses and predictable beats with very little "progressive" content to be found. That may not matter to you but if it does you could get bored here pretty fast with tracks like "Steam" and "Shaking the Tree" given an unbearable 17 minutes of combined space. Even some of the better tracks from SO lack the real spark of the originals/later live versions. The performances by the band and Gabriel, while professional and decent of course, lack the richness and depth of what I witnessed last time out. The sound here is a bit thin which is perhaps why studio overdubbing was necessary on this "live" album. To point out something positive here I have to turn to Paula Cole, whose uplifting vocals on "Come Talk to Me" and "Don't Give Up" are very moving-I really enjoyed her portions of "Blood of Eden" as well. While not a complete trainwreck I cannot muster giving this set 3 stars (thus calling it good) due to the set list and the less-than-fulfilling final result. A Fair rating is more appropriate. There are several peaks in the Gabriel solo career and I've acknowledged them, but the US era is one of the valleys. I recommend skipping this in favor of the superior "Growing Up Live" DVD. You'll get a much more compelling set list and the full video of a show that had twice the thrills and imagination of this ho-hum outing. 5/10

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