Peter Gabriel: Play
Filed Under: Music, Reviews | Article Tags : dvd review , music on dvd
By: Erik Swift
October 2005
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If you’ve never seen Peter Gabriel without hair, “Father, Son” – the opener of his solo video collection “Play” - is a shock. The slim and natty dresser of the 1980s and 1990s has vanished. A bit heavier with a graying goatee, it really is Gabriel that sits at a piano, circa 2000. However, it’s easy to warm to the song created for London’s Millennium Dome as part of the uneven but ambitious conceptual piece Ovo. Tender lyrics are supported with a friendly aura that emits from shifting formats and a grainy black-and-white look provided by his director daughter Anna. A strange but strong choice to kick off a career-encompassing DVD of Gabriel’s visual work, “Father, Son” is a typically unpredictable look at an artist who never fails to surprise.
Gabriel’s videos are so intricate that this deserved Rhino Records release is way overdue. Light on the storytelling and heavy on the art, his clips were nothing like the babe-filled struts from his contemporaries. Some make zero sense (“Blood Of Eden”) but many are cool experiments that click. Whether adding polka dots for texture (“Lovetown”), using key pieces of stock footage (“Games Without Frontiers”) or just pushing the envelope (“Sledgehammer,” “Big Time”), Gabriel made beauty come to MTV. “Play” watches an individual not just stretch convention but gradually innovate, and it’s a wonder to behold.
Although Sinead O’Connor & Youssou N’Dour ably trade vocals at points with Gabriel, he could never do a duets album. Topping “Don’t Give Up” would be tough – finding a more life-affirming song from the last two decades is fruitless, and it’s one of the best duets ever. For Kevin Godley & Lol Crème to be behind the lens is no surprise; the duo makes this simple clip original by excising the expected trappings. Their trademark experiment was to upend the single take, or they would string multiple takes together to look seamless. Here, Gabriel and Kate Bush are filmed simply: locked in a standing embrace, each slowly rotates into view in time to mouth the emotional lyrics. Awaiting Godley and Crème was the similar “When We Was Fab” for George Harrison. Godley alone would helm U2’s “Numb” and their remake of “The Sweetest Thing.”
The majority offers plenty of impressive moments and the final third are amazing, but a few are mediocre. Despite the hallowed status of “Shock The Monkey,” it doesn’t look as impressive sandwiched between the happy “Shaking The Tree” and the satirical “Steam.” Running from unseen pursuers in a forest, a white being lip-synchs with his businesslike counterpart, who turns out to be him. Riiiiiiight. “Kiss That Frog” backfires, and the literal use of technology foreshadows its uneasy presence in later clips; anything from 2002’s Up is arguably enhanced by this but it’s too little, too late. Expectations can become a heavy burden to bear, and every video soon had to break new ground with few solid results. “The Barry Williams Show,” director Sean Penn’s muddled effort, might have made sense when George Bush Sr. was in the White House, Morton Downey Jr. had a TV series and people cared whom Sean Penn was. His skewered look at America’s obsession with daytime talk shows tanks; casting Ashton Kutcher as Ghandi is easier to handle.
At the core of “Play” is music and those who make it, and new surround sound mixes by Daniel Lanois and Richard Chappell are crisp and clear labors of love. Notes leap from everywhere. The loping “Digging In The Dirt” is a great place to start; its crescendo peaks, then slides back into the murky depths of Tony Levin’s bass from whence it came. Gabriel has an extensive list of qualified collaborators, too: Jerry Marotta, David Rhodes and Lanois appear across “Play,” and Manu Katche, Shankar, Nathan East, Robert Fripp and Stewart Copeland lend their talents. Deriders of Dolby Digital 5.1, you finally have other options – 24bit/98kps DTS decoding! The first DVD to utilize this technology, “Play” is a blast to hear regardless of audio preference (and a great home theater test).
Gabriel has always welcomed the interaction between artist and audience, and the programmable jukebox offered on this DVD is a cool tool. Want to hear everything from So? Prefer the new clips? Favor his first video attempts? Set it up however you need your Gabriel fix. Skip the bonus material. It veers from the absolutely weird “Modern Love” to standard trailers for the Secret World and Growing Up tour DVDs. The video introductions don’t offer much, either. After the month-plus shoot that produced “Sledgehammer,” there has to be more than the few seconds that appear here. Check out the huge floppy disk before “I Don’t Remember” to be reminded how far computers have come since 1980…but none of the bonuses truly hurt. Even the credits are hypnotic, and that never happens. “Play” is special, a new benchmark to measure video collections by.
A layoff from 1992-2002 didn’t help Gabriel when he earnestly resurfaced with Up. Everyone from The Red Hot Chili Peppers to Linkin Park was doing big-budget productions by then. Yet, when the most influential music videos are rated, “Sledgehammer” is always at or near the top spot. Quality music and vibrant imagery is not always so easy to blend, but Gabriel remains uniquely successful when he puts pictures to his compositions. He surpassed the competition by making videos that no one could equal. “Play” is proof.
Reviewer’s Opinion: BUY IT!!
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