Universal Records Peter Gabriel - Scratch

 The Quietus : Arty prog-pop. Funk in negative. Depressed, romantic, twitchy, paranoid. You look in its eyes and you fear for its safety, and maybe your own. Here be monsters, in icy, literate, tales of stalkers, assassins, persecuted immigrants, ordinary people who fear they’ll do some damage one fine day, outsiders all. It reveals fresh treasures and kinks even 40 years on. At this time, remember, Gabriel was still trying to lay the ghost of Genesis. He was more identified with the band’s earlier, baroque work than he was with his own. He was the man who’d pondered, “A flower??” in the 26-minute 'Supper’s Ready' while wearing a fox head and a red ballgown. He’d punned and fretted his way through four sides of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. He was theatre rock. But then he’d killed Ziggy. The first two solo albums – despite moments like “Solsbury Hill” and “Modern Love” – had begun to define him in a separate space, but not yet clarified what was going on in that space. Besides, far from feuding and falling out with the remaining members of Genesis, he was on good terms with them. Phil Collins appears on drums here, as he does on so many exquisite albums of the era, putting down markers despite the world of music journalism’s lazy, petty, perpetual loathing of him.

PG3 is where Gabriel ascends, where he hits the perfect point on the curve between artistic ambition and accessibility, between dark and light, between floridness and reticence. Songs, themes, sonics and presence come together to create a cohesive yet many-limbed piece which pitches up somewhere between Lodger and Scary Monsters. Challenged by the NME at the time about Bowie comparisons, he replied defensively, “I get the feeling he’s more calculating. There’s not too much coincidence emanating. With me there is still quite a large functioning of randomness, accident and mistakes.” Going on to praise Bowie’s willingness to keep moving, he added, “You must let go of what you’ve got, cause if you try and clutch on to something which you think is yours, it withers and dies.” It would be facile to pin this album as an anti-Genesis statement though: much of it is every bit as self-important. It’s just leaner, sharper, quicker to make its points. It’s speed (with all the nervous glances over the shoulder), not dope, not comfortable or relaxing.

While this will not turn into a detailed discussion of drum sounds, it has to be mentioned that the outstanding, ominous opener 'Intruder' is where the “gated drums” technique which so dominated and ultimately defiled the subsequent decade was invented.

Gabriel and (the then very fashionable) co-producer Steve Lillywhite banned cymbals, asked Collins and Jerry Marotta to adopt a less-is-more approach, and found the results to be sinister, dramatic and arresting. (Freeing up the higher frequencies thus allowed room for exploration that few artists had realised was possible. They used the spaces for creaks, screeches, whistles, sirens and found sounds that are just as important to the record’s feel as the conventional keyboards, guitars, etc. This subsequently became common practice for a while, then it wasn’t, and now – in a period where music has a chronic lack of drama - it would be good if it was again.)