Peter Gabriel

Up scares my dog. It’s no reflection on the music—I suspect Gabriel is deeply pro-dog—but Up goes from really quiet to really loud really fast, and that scares her and me and says a lot about Peter Gabriel, dramatist. Where the lofty vertical of art crosses the proletarian horizontals of pop, this is Gabriel’s neighborhood, where he takes his risks as ponderer and heavy dude. Up concerns itself with death, but the older man, in his mortality, thankfully retains much of the trademark Gabriel goodies. There are sonic subtleties that will squeeze drool from the corners of sound engineers’ mouths. The usual foreboding that haunts his music rests over deliciously wrought rhythm tracks that, in the end, balance Gabriel’s insistent braininess with some crucial bootybam. Add a popster’s sly engagement with industrial motifs, and the satisfaction of Gabriel devotees is all but assured. Just let the dog out first.