Peter Gabriel 96 24

Rated PG is a compilation album of songs for film soundtracks by English rock musician Peter Gabriel. The track selection spans over 30 years of music created for the individual films, with Walk Through the Fire being the earliest from 1984 and Everybird being the most recent from 2017…

Generally regarded as Peter Gabriel's finest record, his third eponymous album finds him coming into his own, crafting an album that's artier, stronger, more song-oriented than before. Consider its ominous opener, the controlled menace of "Intruder." He's never found such a scary sound, yet it's a sexy scare, one that is undeniably alluring, and he keeps this going throughout the record…

Peter Gabriel's first foray into soundtracks was for Alan Parker's contemplative film Birdy and is a successful companion piece, providing a backdrop that is moody and evocative. Nearly half of the album's dozen tracks incorporate threads from material found on Gabriel's 1982 Security set, including "Close Up," which makes use of keyboard passages from "Family Snapshot," and "The Heat," which is a reworking of "The Rhythm of the Heat" and builds to a frenzied percussive crescendo. Material specially written for this project includes the murky opening track, "At Night," the tribal "Floating Dogs," and "Slow Marimbas," a track that would become part of future live performances. The fact that Birdy comprises all instrumentals means that listeners whose familiarity with Gabriel is limited to "Sledgehammer" and "In Your Eyes" will be largely disappointed. However, its meditative nature makes it fine, reflective listening for the more adventurous.

Passion is in actuality Peter Gabriel's soundtrack to the Martin Scorsese film The Last Temptation of Christ, retitled as a result of legal barriers; regardless of its name, however, there's no mistaking the record's stirring power. Like much of Gabriel's solo work, the album is a product of his continuing fascination with world music, which he employs here to create an exceptionally beautiful and atmospheric tapestry of sound perfectly evocative of the film's resonant spiritual drama; inspired by field recordings collected in areas as diverse as Turkey, Senegal, and Egypt, Passion achieves a cumulative effect clearly Middle Eastern in origin, yet its brilliant fusion of ancient and modern musics ultimately transcends both geography and time.