I had a brief scroll forwards through some of these early Eighties albums and, while there are plenty of artists that I have heard of, and will have heard singles from, there are very few albums that I used to have a copy of. This is one of the few that I did, and it’s one of those interesting experiences where I could recall some of it, while other bits were only vaguely familiar.
Gabriel has evidently been listening to the likes of Joy Division, Eno, and Gary Numan, as this album has a very methodical, mechanical, feel to it musically. This is in part due to his insistence on using no cymbals on the drumming – something his old Genesis mate Phil Collins took to happily, while alternate drummer Jerry Marrota apparently had a harder time getting used to. Gabriel uses a method called “gated reverb” on the drums, that gives them a lot of heavy thump – reverb up front with the echoing end of the sound cut off. Keep an ear out for this sound as the Eighties goes on, it will end up being done to death. There’s ample use of synthesiser patterns, and what sounds like marimbas (probably from percussionist Morris Pert). Overall, there’s a very solid, often disturbing, quality to the sound.
Which matches Gabriel’s lyrics nicely. A lot of the songs on here are about fringe or transgressive thought patterns – the sinister Intruder, for example, takes us into the mind of a person creeping into somebody else’s house, while No Self Control is about obsessive behaviour and the narrator of Lead A Normal Life is evidently locked away in some form of institution, “eating with a spoon, they don’t give you knives” as they look out at the trees of the outside world.
Family Snapshot is a thematic bridge to the more political songs on the album. It gets inside the mind of an assassin planning, and carrying out, his assassination with the aim of gaining notoriety. Elements of the JFK assassination are present, but the song is actually based on the book An Assassin’s Diary, about an attempt to kill Democratic pro-segregation politician George Wallace.
Perhaps the most well-known track on here will be the hit single Games Without Frontiers, a satirical look at the “silly games” of international politics, reducing countries and their leaders to the status of children fighting in a playground. Kate Bush provides the background lyrics – the start of an ongoing collaboration between her and Gabriel – singing the French translation, “Jeux sans Frontieres”. For those who may not have grown up in that time and place, this was a pan-European TV show where contestants did daft competitions, usually involving dressing up in giant foam costumes and trying to ferry coloured water from one place to another across an obstacle course. “It’s a Knockout” was the UK title for the show – each country had heats, submitting a national team to the finals. The final was usually in a castle, or a harbour with a real ship, or something much higher budget than the cheap and crappy UK heats which were in a muddy field like a school sports day. Oh, and the presenter turned out to be a serial sex offender, like many figures from UK Seventies TV.
The song, though, still holds up, with its Numan-esque synth patterns, a pleasing mix of complexity and catchiness.
Best track of the lot, though, is the powerful Biko that closes the album, a eulogy to murdered anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, a funereal drum-beat leading the song to an emotional climax. It blends in Xhosa singers and lyrics as well, the first steps on Gabriel’s involvement with world music. For this track alone, the album is worth the price of admission, but fortunately it’s all solid stuff.
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