Peter Gabriel

So

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Review Score:

(8/10)
Had this album when I was, as the poet would say, "young and easy under the apple boughs about the lilting house / And happy as the grass was green"; remember having venerated the "Sledgehammer" song & video as a singularly exuberant contribution to culture. The comparisons that come to mind are not so much John Donne as George Herbert (see "The Flower"), Thomas Carew ("Ask me no more where Jove bestows," etc.), Thomas Campion, and Fulke Greville. Perhaps some listeners will detect a similarity between Peter Gabriel's lyrics and the 46th poem of Gaius Valerius Catullus ("Iam ver egelidos refert tepores, iam caeli furor aequinoctialis iucundis Zephyri silescit auris"). Anne Sexton makes an appearance -- in "Mercy Street," solemn without being unduly lugubrious. And who could forget "Red Rain"? Some listeners may find "So" a tad poppy, or even (shall we say it?) dated ... but the opening notes of "Sledgehammer," rather like Proust's madeleine, transport us to a time when the world was young, or at least not quite as old as it is now.

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