Day 0388 - Peter Gabriel

Peter Gabriel "Peter Gabriel" (1977)

 
Gabriel's first release following his release from the perceived creative shackles of Genesis (and the first of FOUR albums simply titled "Peter Gabriel"); and he hit the ground running.  Crafting 9 diverse musical tracks, starting with a fairly theatrical piece "Moribund the Burgermeister" where he swings from his natural singing voice to a deep gravelly 'character' delivery. "Waiting on the big one" and "Here comes the flood" are deliciously epic in feel, and "Excuse me" seems stylistically like it could have been a Randy Newman-penned novelty hit.

As I've said before, this is the kind of solo album I enjoy, where the artist is willing to explore various musical terrains with only themselves to please and (in the case of a solo artist from a band) do something other than what his/her band would normally be doing.

For such an immensely talented and creative guy, he didn't come up with the most imaginative album title... though maybe he just wanted to take 'ownership' of the music that little bit more by slapping his name on it.

Day 0369 - Before and After Science

Brian Eno "Before and After Science" (1977)

Eno collaborates with a catalogue of artists including Robert Fripp and even Phil Collins. As with his other solo albums that I've listened to so far, he manages to incorporate interesting audio textures, avant garde techniques and, here, some occasionally virtuosic performances into a cohesive and often quite 'pop' sounding whole.

This album doesn't stand out above the other two of his that I've heard on this list, but that says more about the consistency of quality of Eno's solo output than any particular shortcoming of this album.

Fun fact, Eno would go on to produce the second Talking Heads album, and this record features a track "King's Lead Hat" which is an anagram of that band's name.