The album is just called Peter Gabriel but since PG did the same thing twice before it was confusing as hell. The fabulous cover by Hipgnosis, however, gave this great 1980 LP its lasting nickname: Melt.
PG3 is my favorite Gabriel solo album. It merged the somewhat poppier style from his first solo LP with his hardcore prog work with Genesis. And the merger/marriage was a great success artistically. PG’s commercial break through took a bit longer, but this album contains some of his best songs including The Intruder, Not One Of Us, Family Snapshot, and I Don’t Remember.Melt also brought the plight of Steve Biko to international attention. A great LP with great cover art .Jeez, I sound like Tony The Fucking Tiger.
Here’s the cover for the first single from the album, Games Without Frontiers:
Here’s the entire album via the YouTube:
THIS! Great album, great musician. I was 16 when this album came out. Until we read the lyric sheet we thought “Jieux sans frontieres” was “She’s so funky-o”. I still sing it like that in my head. Good times!
I thought it was “she’s so popular.” Good to know.
The big advance on this record was the drum sound: no cymbals, and electronically treated through a device called a noise gate, which stops the signal when the volume goes below a certain point– so instead of a natural fadeout in the drum sound, it just suddenly disappears. Weird but effective, and after Gabriel did it, that sound was ubiquitous for a while.
But yeah, what keeps listeners coming back to this album in particular is the quality of the songs. Glad you mentioned “Family Snapshot,” a favorite of mine for eons.