PETER GABRIEL 4 [AKA: MASK, AKA: SECURITY]

While Gabriel's first four albums have their moments of interest, Security is probably the most excruciating for me to get through. After the first two mediocre albums and a better third one, Pete takes another step backwards with Security. Whereas the third album took the wanderings of the first two and added sophistication, focus, and fun, Security retains the sophistication but loses the focus and fun. Of course it has good moments here and there but it is such a dry, smug album that appeals to almost no side of my relatively open musical palette. It wanders and wanders and just never gets anywhere. I have little to say about the songs other than they just crawl for me. "San Jacinto" has some very good vocals but could really use a kick in the... "The Family and the Fishing Net" features some interesting bass playing. "Wallflower" is probably the closest I come to liking anything here, it's a pretty song. In "Kiss of Life" you can hear some of the influence of his friend Kate Bush who was doing "The Dreaming" around this time. While he may have been the big star having been in Genesis, she was cleaning his clock in these days at putting out delicious progressive flavored pop-rock music that was not only inventive but had a real infectious grab on you. Precious little grabs me on Security.

With his first four solo albums behind him for better or worse, his future work would raise the bar considerably on a commercial level. Some would hate the more mainstream directions and while I often bristle at it, in Pete's case I think it may have been a wise move. His record in these fairly explorative early albums has not been particularly solid in my view. I repeat that if you cherry-picked the best tracks from these first four albums you'd have one hell of a good one. But as they are I find them full of filler and many more strikes than home runs. Better stuff would come down the road.