A fantastic overview of everything one needs to know about Peter Gabriel’s solo career, Hit <\/i>is an accurate, even-handed and thorough collection of the former Genesis frontman’s 1976-2003 hits and key album tracks.<\/p>\n
Those two categories are split up into two discs, one labeled Hit and one labeled Miss. The former contains pretty much all of Gabriel’s major and minor hits and the latter contains some album tracks, remixes and soundtrack-only songs, with each disc also boasting a new song to entice collectors. Each disc is then jumbled non-chronologically so that, much like Gabriel’s albums, you don’t know what’s coming next, but it’s probably not what you expect.<\/p>\n
The first disc weaves together the hits from six of Gabriel’s eight studio albums, ignoring the second self-titled album and 2000’s OVO<\/i> and giving precedence to So <\/i>and the third self-titled album. The sublime, deft “Solsbury Hill,” as great an emancipation statement and singer\/songwriter classic from the 1970s as any you can name, starts off this collection, giving way to the goofy new wave of “Shock The Monkey,” the unsettling anti-war Kate Bush collaboration “Games Without Frontiers” and the sarcastic, confident pop of “Sledgehammer,” the sound of Gabriel firmly breaking from his art-rock past.<\/p>\n
1992’s Up <\/i>is represented well by the electronic pop of “Steam” and “Digging In The Dirt,” which are sonically preceded by So<\/i>‘s “Big Time.” The melancholy “Red Rain,” the pensive “Biko” and the lovely “Here Comes The Flood” all showcase different sides of Gabriel’s songwriting, and each are satisfying in their own ways (note: the version of “Flood” is the remake from 1990’s Shaking The Tree <\/i>compilation, not the original, but it’s of no real consequence). <\/p>\n
The second disc is predictably a mixed bag, though the creativity and dexterity of the first disc is on equal display. Radio hit and love song “In Your Eyes” is on here (why it’s not on the first disc is a mystery), as is the world drumbeat-enhanced “The Rhythm Of The Heat” and “Family Snapshot,” the most Genesis-like track here. On the flip side is the overlong “San Jacinto,” which never really goes anywhere, the dull, formless “Father, Son” (from OVO<\/i>) and the ponderous, dull songs from 2002’s Up<\/i>. The “Philadelphia” soundtrack song “Lovetown” is here, with a darker undercurrent that lends weight to the initial adult contemporary sound, and fans will enjoy the new live song “Downside Up,” a duet with daughter <\/b>Melanie that also features Tony Levin on bass and a strong latter-day Genesis feel, almost as if Gabriel had been listening to We Can’t Dance <\/i>and wanted to respond.<\/p>\n
Granted, those highlights are mainly of interest to collectors and those wanting to delve deeper than the radio hits, because the average Joe who likes “Sledgehammer” won’t likely listen to the odd art-New Wave-pop of “I Don’t Remember,” for example; put another way, there’s a reason many of those songs are in the “miss” category, although again the highlights are worthwhile for the curious and the converted (although one wishes something from the second solo album had been included for completeness). In any event, Hit <\/i>is worth owning for the first disc alone, as its highlights illustrate a sporadic, idiosyncratic and brilliant career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":32140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5924],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-43889","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-peter-gabriel","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43889"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43889"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}