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Peter Gabriel is such a busy performer, what with his occasional soundtrack songs (for such movies as Philadelphia and City Of Angels and his occasional soundtrack scoring (Long Walk Home, Birdy, Passion: Music For The Last Temptation Of Christ, etc.) and other projects which don’t quite qualify as solo albums (OVO). And it’s easy to forget, with all of that activity, that here we have a man who hasn’t really released a solo album in a decade. Let’s put that in perspective, shall we?

• When Us was released, I was still working part-time in radio.
• When Us was released, the fifth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation was still on the air, and it was still the only Star Trek series on TV. No one had ever heard of Babylon 5 or Xena.
• When Us was released, the Persian Gulf War had been over for a year - or so many of us thought.
• When Us was released, Britney Spears was still on the New Mickey Mouse Club, and Toad The Wet Sprocket was actually getting radio airplay.
• When Us was released, I was in my 20s, not my 30s.

Now, bearing in mind that Up has been “just around the corner” since 1998 or so, there’s a certain anticipation factor at work here as well. Given that Pete’s soundtrack work in the past decade or so has been exceptional, most of his fans were eager to hear what it would be like when the man would actually open his mouth and sing again.

Up was either going to be nothing short of a spiritual revelation, or a total disappointment.

Actually, it’s neither - it’s a good album, certainly, but in some ways Gabriel has yet to match the diversity and virtuosity of 1986’s So, the album which put him on the charts with “Big Time” and “Sledgehammer”. There’s a certain introspective murkiness that has dominated Gabriel’s work, both solo and theatrical, since 1989’s Passion, which was the project where he fell in love with Mediterranean soundscapes and instruments. There’s nothing wong with that, but sometimes that atmosphere just doesn’t lend itself to a great pop song like “Big Time”.

Up opens with “Darkness”, which smacks mightily of the first song on his third self-titled album. Almighty searing blasts of distorted guitar belie the song’s true nature, which gets much quieter as it goes on despite a paranoid lyric that made sense with the blasting intro of the song. Things get a little more lively with the outstanding “Growing Up”, which is a complex, jumpy tune in which two or three simultaneous lyrics occasionally overlap, especially in the last verse of the song.

“Sky Blue” is a quiet, ambient number (featuring guitars by none other than Peter Green) which had already been heard to a certain extent - a few tracks on Gabriel’s soundtrack project Long Walk Home previewed the awesomely atmospheric backing vocals of the Blind Boys Of Alabama, though here the power of those vocals is somewhat diminished. I can’t really explain, but on Long Walk Home, the Blind Boys came out of nowhere and made a quiet little cue a show-stopper; here, they’re just echoing a melody that Gabriel’s been singing throughout the song.

“No Way Out” is another quiet song with an alarming and arresting lyric - the simplest interpretation of which is that someone standing next to the person singing the song has been shot - featuring former Crowded House producer Mitchell Froom on piano and Gabriel himself on guitar (I could be wrong, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard of Pete playing guitar). Froom’s presence is no surprise, as the entire album is mixed by Tchad Blake, who also lent a lot of atmosphere to the latter Crowded House albums.

The next track, however, makes “Sky Blue”’s recycling of vocals pale in comparison: “I Grieve”, though a nice song (which almost feels like two wildly different songs glued together), was heard two or three years ago on the City Of Angels soundtrack. If anything, this is my biggest beef with Up - I was hoping to hear completely new material. “Sky Blue” I can handle - it was previewed on a soundtrack mere months before Up’s release - but “I Grieve” is a few years older than that.

“The Barry Williams Show”, a slightly dated pop number whose lyrics address Jerry Springer/Maury Povich-esque talk shows, has already been widely heard as the album’s lead single. It’s probably the most radio-ready song on the album, but its subject matter has passed its sell-by date, and one wonders how long ago it was written. Maybe around the same time as “I Grieve”.

The next four songs may be the most interesting stuff on the entire album: “My Head Sounds Like That” (guest starring the uniquely spare brass sound of the Black Dyke Band, which made OVO’s “Father, Son” the sentimental tear-jerker that it is), more of the Blind Boys of Alabama on the upbeat “More Than This” (not a remake of the Bryan Ferry song of the same name), the epic orchestral grandeur of “Signal To Noise”, and the brief and surprisingly quiet closing number, “The Drop”. The last of these four is quite a shocker compared to the rest of the album, as it primarily features Gabriel’s untreated voice accompanied by an untreated solo piano (there are some other ambient-ish sounds in the mix too, but they’re way down in the mix).

“Signal To Noise” features the wailing vocals of guest Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the strings of the London Session Orchestra, and the thundering wall of sound of the Dhol Foundation Drummers, but while the guest performers and the arrangement are very impressive, the basic melody itself and the sparse lyrics are almost like something out of Gabriel’s second or third album; it’s a simple song, nicely dressed up. And speaking of guest performers, I couldn’t help but notice that Jon Brion got a credit in “More Than This” - seems that even though he can’t get a major label to release that underrated (and finished) album of his, Brion’s getting plenty of attention from other musicians. That may be a higher compliment than record sales anyway.

Overall, Up is yet another intense Peter Gabriel listening experience, but in some places it’s curiously lacking the heart of his earlier works. And I’ll admit, Gabriel’s increasing tendency to borrow from his own back catalogue is becoming worrisome - this coming from someone who’d prefer to hear new material when he plunks money down on the counter for a supposedly new CD. Still, I recommend it - perhaps Up will be an instance of an album that finds new fans for Gabriel rather than living up to the wishes of his established listeners.

1. Darkness (6:51)
2. Growing Up (7:33)
3. Sky Blue (6:31)
4. No Way Out (7:53)
5. I Grieve (7:24)
6. The Barry Williams Show (7:16)
7. My Head Sounds Like That (6:29)
8. More Than This (6:02)
9. Signal To Noise (7:36)
10. The Drop (2:59)

Released by: Geffen
Release date: 2002
Total running time: 66:43

When Leiji Matsumoto’s epic space opera Space Battleship Yamato (later imported to the U.S. as Star Blazers) proved to be a success in Japan, the show’s landmark first season was rewritten and compressed into a movie with new (and, in many cases, improved) animation. The movie also went over well, so a second film was created, though it made the ill-advised move of killing off the entire crew of the Yamato in a fateful battle with the Comet Empire.

One little problem: that movie also went over well, creating even more of a demand. So the movie was rewritten and expanded into enough scripts to cover another season of the TV series, a season which left the crew alive at the end to continue their adventures on both the big and small screens.

This is the soundtrack to that movie, which was also used for the TV reworking of the story.

Now that the history lesson is out of the way, let’s talk music. There is a vast difference between this soundtrack and the soundtrack of the first season’s music in terms of both sound quality and, on a less technical level, the sophistication of the music itself.

Many of the same cues heard in season one were reused in season two, but the technical and musical improvements are perhaps most detectable in the recycled cues. “The Mystery Of Space” is a solemn variation on “The Universe Spreading To Infinity”, one of my favorite pieces from the original season one soundtrack. In this case, it underscores the Yamato’s crew gathering at a memorial for their fallen captain at Hero’s Hill. And the effect, even without the visuals is spectacular.

In other tracks that revamp season one’s signature themes, the overall effect is bigger and bolder - brassy cues blast even louder than they did originally, and the funky cues with rock instrumentation crank it up that much more in this recording. The larger orchestra used for these sessions almost has the same impact of the excellent Symphonic Suite Yamato.

Knowing in advance that Space Battleship Yamato Part 2 featured much music that had already been used in the first soundtrack, I didn’t expect to like it as much as I did. It’s both an excellent collection of music and a pleasant surprise.

1. The Silence Of Space (1:04)
2. The Mystery Of Space (1:45)
3. Iscandar (1:43)
4. The Universe Spreading To Infinity (1:05)
5. Yamato’s Theme (1:28)
6. Yamato Takes Flight! (1:30)
7. Courageous Yamato (1:12)
8. Yamato’s Battle (1:07)
9. Wounded Yamato (0:59)
10. Rise Up, Yamato! (0:45)
11. Desler’s Bolero (1:04)
12. Meditation (1:41)
13. Desler’s Tactics (2:32)
14. Complications (1:47)
15. Imprisonment (0:44)
16. The Rival I (3:00)
17. Kodai And Dessler’s Friendship (1:27)
18. The Rival II (1:22)
19. Reminiscence (2:10)
20. Menace In Space (1:49)
21. Appearance And Attack (0:47)
22. Comet Empire Fleet Sorties! (1:09)
23. Battle Theme (1:18)
24. Comet Empire Emperor Zordar (0:37)
25. Great Love (1:58)
26. Reunion (1:30)
27. Thoughts Toward The Stars (1:00)
28. Tears Of Love (0:47)
29. Melody Of Love (1:58)
30. Andromeda (1:30)
31. Yamato Opening Theme (1:29)
32. Yamato Reunion (2:03)
33. Teresa’s Theme (1:15)
34. Mystery Of Planet Telezart (0:43)
35. Teresa’s Love Theme (2:20)
36. Various Endings (3:40)
37. The Scarlet Scarf (1:54)

Released by: Nippon Columbia
Release date: 1995
Total running time: 56:38

Still my favorite Christian rock act, Jars Of Clay’s fourth album sees them returning not only to the studio, but to the producer’s chair. Though I liked the stylistic stretches that it represented, not everyone dug If I Left The Zoo, with its almost Jellyfish-like experimentation with everything from bluegrass banjos to hard rock. That spirit of not sticking to the program, fortunately, survives through The Eleventh Hour with the hard-rocking “Revolution” (a smart song whose message is that if you really want to be a rebel, try being a decent person instead of trying to be a badass), and flirting with a latter-day R.E.M.-ish sound on “Silence”. The more traditional Jars Of Clay sound is still present too, with “Fly” and an alternate rock hit waiting to be discovered, “I Need You”. The band still excels at love songs which are neither sappy nor overly concerned with physical relations; they could be sung to the object of your affections as easily as they could be sung to Jesus - and that’s the beauty of it, because the latter is who the songs are directed toward, but these songs could hit mainstream secular radio without sounding like Christian music.

Though the entire album is excellent, the cluster of “Fly”, “I Need You” and “Silence” is one of the better three-song runs I’ve heard on anything I’ve listened to recently. But the entire CD is highly recommended.

1. Disappear (3:56)
2. Something Beautiful (3:46)
3. Revolution (3:42)
4. Fly (3:20)
5. I Need You (3:40)
6. Silence (5:17)
7. Scarlet (3:32)
8. Whatever She Wants (3:43)
9. The Eleventh Hour (4:27)
10. These Ordinary Days (3:04)
11. The Edge Of Water (3:54)

Released by: Silvertone
Release date: 2002
Total running time: 42:21

It may have been a little ahead of its time, but the soundtrack from Westwood’s acclaimed real-time strategy computer game Command & Conquer could almost earn the subtitle “music that could have been, but wasn’t, in The Matrix.” Frank Klepacki’s richly textured pieces rely heavily on techno, primarily because it’s easy to loop seamlessly (which is a requirement when scoring a video game). But while he could’ve just set the war machine on autopilot for these tracks, Klepacki made a real effort to vary the sound of each individual piece. Standouts include “Radio”, “Drone”, “Rain In The Night” and “Target”, all notable for a nice, uneasy but not overbearingly bombastic atmosphere, just the sort of doom-laden tension you need for a war game.

Klepacki leans very heavily on speech samples throughout the soundtrack, which is something I probably could have lived without; in a few tracks, such as “Just Do It Up” and “Act On Instinct”, the constant bits of movie dialogue, news clips and whatnot become a distraction against the music.

Westwood sold copies of the Command & Conquer soundtrack through their web site for several years, and copies have also been known to be included with bundled versions of the game with its expansion packs (and, most recently, included in a music bundle at Best Buy stores with Red Alert 2). However, the C&C score is now out of print. It’s worth the effort to find, however, if you have a taste for this particular genre of music.

1. Act On Instinct (2:52)
2. No Mercy (3:21)
3. Industrial (2:53)
4. Iron Fist (3:30)
5. We Will Stop Them (3:09)
6. Radio (3:01)
7. On The Prowl (3:02)
8. Re-Con (4:22)
9. Drone (4:32)
10. In The Line Of Fire (2:04)
11. Prepare For Battle (3:29)
12. Depth Charge (4:15)
13. Rain In The Night (2:34)
14. Creeping Upon (3:37)
15. Target (2:52)
16. Just Do It Up (2:22)
17. C&C Thang (3:12)
18. To Be Feared (2:45)
19. Drill (4:27)
20. Full Stop (3:01)
21. In Trouble (3:32)
22. Airstrike (3:17)

Released by: Westwood Studios / Electronic Arts
Release date: 1995
Total running time: 72:09