Up (Peter Gabriel album)

Gabriel started work on the album in the spring of 1995. He and engineer Richard Chappell travelled between different locations during the initial writing stages of the album using a portable setup (recording at Real World Studios in between): the first two months were spent in a rented chalet in Méribel, then three months in Senegal starting in October 1995, followed by another trip to Méribel in Spring 1996 and a brief recording stint on a friend's recording-studio-equipped boat along the Amazon in Summer 1997.^[6] From then on, the rest of the album work was based at Real World Studios, where further writing, recording, overdubbing, editing and mixing took place over the next four to five years.^[6] At one point, work was being done simultaneously on both Up and the OVO soundtrack for a few months, separately by engineers Chappell and Richard Evans (respectively). However, in November 1998, both engineers decided to focus on completing the OVO soundtrack, so work on Up was temporarily put on hold.^[7]

By late 2000, work on the album was finally gathering renewed pace, with a string section recorded at AIR Lyndhurst Hall Studios in London amongst other things. Renowned mixer Tchad Blake was invited to Real World Studios in early 2001 to begin the final mixing stage.^[8] He would work on the mixes in the Big Room in Real World Studios, while Gabriel and Chappell continued recording in the Writing Room. Between them they'd figure out which of the newly recorded parts would be used in the mix or not.^[6]

Its name was Up from the start, though at one point the name I/O was considered (which Gabriel started work on during the making of Up and OVO as well, though it would not be released until 2023): "I think 'I/o' is a good title because I noticed a lot of the songs were about birth and death and a little bit of in and out activity in between." ^[9] In 1998, Gabriel learned that R.E.M. also intended to release an album bearing the same title, but decided to keep it after consulting with the band and much consideration: "I have been living in an 'Up' world for four years now and have no wish to come down."^[10] In the months preceding the album's release, video clips of Gabriel talking about the songs as well as short demos of each song were released at the coming of every full moon on Gabriel's official website.

The album's lyrics deal mostly with birth and especially death. The opening track, "Darkness", is a song about overcoming fears. "Growing Up" is a summation of life put to a pulsating beat. "Sky Blue", according to Gabriel, was the oldest song from the album, dating back to the Us recording sessions.^[11] The track "No Way Out" is the first track to deal with death solely, though death is a common theme across the entire album. "I Grieve" was conceived after Gabriel looked over his catalogue of music as if it were a catalogue of emotional tools. He found one major missing tool to be one to cope with death and therefore "I Grieve" was born. Gabriel performed the song live on the television show Larry King Weekend on the first anniversary of September 11 attacks in the US, during which Gabriel said that his two daughters were living in New York City and he could not contact them for some time, and that this song was for people who did not hear anything from their relatives then.^[12] It was not, however, written specifically for 9/11, having appeared in an earlier version on the City of Angels soundtrack in 1998.^[13]

The first single from Up, "The Barry Williams Show" is a down-beat song dealing with reality talk shows such as Jerry Springer (in fact, The Brady Bunch star Barry Williams appeared as an audience member in the Sean Penn-directed music video for the song with Requiem for a Dream actor Christopher McDonald playing the titular talk show host).^[14] "My Head Sounds Like That" was built around the sounds of a malfunctioning DeltaLab Echo Unit. The song's lyrics reference a heightened awareness of sound and smell when in different emotional states.^[13]

"More Than This" was one of the album's final additions. Gabriel achieved some of the melodic motifs through a Fender Telecaster, which he sampled with a keyboard.^[15] The song "Signal to Noise" features guest vocalist Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, whose vocal performance was salvaged from the VH1 performance on 28 April 1996 following his death in 1997.^[9][16] Originally he performed the song in a "much starker" form, before Gabriel transformed it into a strings-oriented piece as the cornerstone of the album.^[17] Finally, "The Drop" consists of only Gabriel and a Bösendorfer grand piano.^[13]

The album cover features five water drops in a diagonal line, over a blurred background of Gabriel's face. Each drop contains a refracted image of Gabriel. Similar to Us, the album cover does not include any text.^[18]

In a similar fashion to the earlier Us, Up used specially commissioned artwork representing each song, which was reproduced in the CD, vinyl, DVD-A, and SACD packaging. In this case the medium chosen was photography. Pictures are by Arno Rafael Minkkinen for "Darkness", M. Richard Kirstel for "Growing Up", Shomei Tomatsu for "Sky Blue" and "I Grieve", Mari Mahr for "No Way Out", Paul Thorel for "The Barry Williams Show", Granular-Synthesis (Kurt Hentschläger and Ulf Langheinrich) for "My Head Sounds Like That", Susan Derges for "More Than This", Michal Rovner for "Signal to Noise", Adam Fuss for "The Drop."

Protected CD copies, released in US only, include "Burn You Up, Burn You Down" (this song was later released on the compilation album Hit in 2003 and on Big Blue Ball in 2008). On these copies, "No Way Out" has a different name, "Don't Leave".

The album was made available in stereo on CD & vinyl while Surround Sound versions are encoded in Super Audio CD, and DTS DVD-A.^[18]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	74/100[19]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[20]
Entertainment.ie	[21]
Entertainment Weekly	A−[22]
The Guardian	[23]
Kludge	7/10[24]
Pitchfork	7.2/10[25]
Rolling Stone	[5]

According to the review aggregator Metacritic, Up received "generally favorable reviews" based on a weighted average score of 74 out of 100 from 16 critic scores.^[19]

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic said that Up was not immediately accessible, but "grows stronger, revealing more with each listen."^[20] Pitchfork praised the first half of the album, but was more critical of the last five songs on the album, singling out "My Head Sounds Like That" for being "shapeless" and dismissing both "More Than This" and "Signal to Noise" as uncreative compositions that "will entertain only the least critical in Gabriel's audience."^[25]

While Entertainment Weekly criticized "The Barry Williams Show" for being a "muddled stab at social criticism", they were more complimentary of some of Gabriel's more introspective compositions such as "Darkness" and "No Way Out". They further stated that "those who value the emotional nakedness of his best work will find much to treasure on Up."^[22] Entertainment.ie described the production as both "claustrophobic and womblike - which is entirely appropriate for an album that's heavily preoccupied with solemn ruminations on childhood and, less frequently, death." They found some of the compositions to be "lengthy, disparate collages bordering on the unbearably pretentious", but were more complimentary of Gabriel's vocals.^[21]

• Up at MusicBrainz
• Up at MusicBrainz
• Richard Chappell on recording Up at Sound on Sound
• Up at Metacritic