Peter Gabriel [Atlantic, 1978]
One of those records that is diminished by the printed lyrics that are its reason for being. Musically, Gabriel combines with producer Robert Fripp for alert art-rock that gets down around atonality rather than jumping into the astral-noodle soup, with Roy Bittan's romantic flourishes as welcome as "D.I.Y.," a hard-rock landmark in a hard-rock year. But even though it makes you sit up when it comes on the radio, it's basically program music, designed to support words as elitist (and programmatic) as the social commentary Gabriel used to essay in his Genesis days. Remember the immortal words of Chuck Berry: beware of middlebrows bearing electric guitars. B-

Recurring [RCA, 1991]
Stooges for airports ("Everything I Know", "Hypnotized") **

Hejira [Asylum, 1976]
Album eight is most impressive for the cunning with which Mitchell subjugates melody to the natural music of language itself. Whereas in the past only her naive intensity has made it possible to overlook her old-fashioned prosody, here she achieves a sinuous lyricism that is genuinely innovative. Unfortunately, the chief satisfaction of Mitchell's words--the way they map a woman's reality--seems to diminish as her autonomy increases. The reflections of a rich, faithless, compulsively mobile, and compulsively romantic female are only marginally more valuable than those of her marginally more privileged male counterparts, especially the third or fourth time around. It ain't her, bub, it ain't her you're lookin' for. B+