soundtrack – Jarrett House North

Album of the Week, June 6, 2026

Peter Gabriel spent the months following So touring the world; the concert film Live in Athens gives a good idea of what that experience was like. But he was still writing music, and the next thing that came from him was a one-two punch: a soundtrack album to the most controversial film of the late 1980s, and a brand new record label to release it. And Peter being Peter, he released the album in June 1989, almost a full nine months after the theatrical release of the film that inspired it.

The energy that today animates reactionary groups like the Promise Keepers and Christian Nationalist groups was alive and well in the 1980s, in the form of groups like the Moral Majority, TV evangelist fans, and other similar gatherings of extremists. They weren’t happy with Martin Scorsese’s film (though few formed an opinion informed by actually having seen it), which dared to imagine that Jesus might have been human enough to have been tempted by the possibility of family life into abandoning his mission; the idea that Jesus might have in particular entertained sexual thoughts was particularly threatening.¹ Some of those who felt so threatened lost the plot badly enough that they firebombed cinemas and made death threats against Scorsese. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…

Gabriel seems to have escaped the threats, possibly because his album came out so much later than the movie’s release and the height of the controversy. Though a version of the music appears in the film, he kept working on it, trying to find the right sounds and textures, through March of 1989. And, thanks to his ongoing work with WOMAD and his previous collaborations, he had the right musicians to work with, many of whom would go on to release albums of their own on his new label, Real World Records. The list was long and included Egyptian percussionist Hossam Ramzy; Indian violinist L. Shankar; Senegalese vocalists Baaba Maal and Youssou N’Dour; Pakistani qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; Senegalese drummer Doudou N’Daiye Rose; percussionists and string players Massamba Diop, Mahmoud Tabrizi Zadeh, and Fatala; Turkish ney flute master Kudsi Erguner; Brazilian percussionist Djalma Corrêa; Americans Jon Hassell, David Sancious, Billy Cobham, Nathan East and Manny Elias; and Peter’s long-term collaborators David Rhodes and David Bottrill.

All that said, the most notable music performance on the first track is a sample. “The Feeling Begins” opens with a traditional Armenian melody played on doudouks by Vatche Housepian and Antranik Askarian, from a collection of traditional Armenian music released on Ocora Records years before. The doudouk melody forms the backbone of the arrangement, but the massive percussion attack from Manny Elias with Hossam Ramzy is also fairly magnificent and provides our first clue that we’re in for a genre-bending ride throughout the album. As the doudouk melody comes to an end, the drums roar in a crescendo, using the same trick that Peter so memorably deployed in “The Rhythm of the Heat.”

One thing I discovered as a teenager listening to this album (I bought it the first summer I ever lived for myself, during a monthlong science Governor’s School experience at Virginia Tech, so I listened to it a lot) was that I was less engaged by the tracks that featured fewer live instruments. “Gethsemane” is one of those tracks, constructed by Gabriel from samples of flute and voices. But it’s appropriately ominous and ghostly, and does the job of foreshadowing that it’s meant to do.

It’s followed by one of the more spectacular sequences on the album. “Of These, Hope” opens with a fanfare of sorts on the arghul, an ancient reed instrument that here contributes a swirl of crowd noise over an insistent talking drum courtesy of Massamba Diop. Peter has said of So that the groove was the thing that made that album so special; “Of These, Hope” is a classical composition with groove. It also has strong textural interest thanks to the arghul, and from the combination of drone, flute whistle, talking drum, guitar and synths. This leads into “Lazarus Raised” without break via an anticipatory shiver of synths as another doudouk sample — this time an uncredited Kurdish player from a UNESCO collection — gives us a mysterious melody signifying the expression of power leading to the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Peter’s flute whistle leads us into “Of These, Hope (Reprise),” which plays like a further elaboration of the melody. It misses the shock and awe of the arghul chorus from the first repetition, but gains a different sort of shock and awe thanks to the presence of Baaba Maal, a Senegalese vocalist whose speciality was the traditional music of the Pulaar-speaking peoples of the Futa Tooro region of Senegal.

“In Doubt” is another synth-forward groove, given depth by the uncanny sound of the kementché, an Iranian bowed string instrument here played by Mahmoud Tabrizi Zadeh. Peter doesn’t let this groove build for very long before a bigger one takes over , a massive percussion onslaught from Doudou N’Daiye Rose and Fatala signals the arrival of “A Different Drum.” I can almost hear Peter telling Geffen Records, “This is the single.” Between the strong rhythmic intensity, the insistently repetitive melodic theme, the wordless chorus, and above all the presence of the spectacular voice of Youssou N’Dour, this is one of the most accessible and memorable tracks on the album. It has the feeling of one of Peter’s songs-in-progress that never received a proper lyric, but the feeling is there, a stirringly heroic track.

What did get life as an independent single, somewhat surprisingly, is the next track,“Zaar.” A complex track built around a slowed- and pitched-down drum sample, the band, here featuring Hossam Ramzy on percussion, Mahmoud Tabrizi Zadeh‘s kementché, wordless vocals, and an intense series of interjections from L. Shankar’s violin, constructs a striking mood piece whose free interchange of musical ideas and sounds seems to sum up the whole project. “Zaar” was the track Peter chose to represent this project on his first greatest hits album, which would be released two years later, and it feels like a universe of its own.

“Troubled” is built around a mean groove built out of layered drums and percussion, all played by the great Billy Cobham. After we heard him on Champions and on a whole slew of CTI albums, Cobham joined John McLaughlin’s legendary jazz-world-fusion project Mahavishnu Orchestra, and it’s that polyrhythmic intensity that he brings here over a backing of snarling synths and a wordless vocals chorus loop. “Open” breathes more freely, a duet between Peter on the Prophet and Akai S900 and vocals, and L. Shankar’s violin and vocals. It suspends time and, with the echoes of ragas in Shankar’s improvisation, lends an unexpected emotional resonance to the simple melody Concluding the trio of pieces, “Before Night Falls” is a three-way collaboration between Hossam Ramzy, Shankar, and the great Turkish Sufi ney flute legend Kudsi Erguner, with added depth courtesy of one of engineer David Bottrill’s legendary drones. The plaintive melody and fade-out lend the feeling of a sunset over the gates of a desert city.

We leave groove behind for more traditional composition with “With This Love,” a haunting melody played by Robin Canter on the cor Anglais. The melody is gorgeous but the layers of synths detract somewhat from the emotional power of the work. The theme bookends a trio of pieces dealing with the actual crucifixion of Christ, starting with “Sandstorm,” in which Hossam Ramzy, Mahmoud Tabrizi Zadeh, Manu Katché and Shankar build an atmospheric groove over a location recording of Moroccan percussion and vocals. The synths add a blurriness to the overall effect, so when the Moroccan musicians cut through it’s startling and intense.

“Stigmata” is a joint improvisation by Mahmoud Tabrizi Zadeh, Shankar and Gabriel. The instrumental texture is deep and mysterious, but ultimately the tension ebbs away into the fade-out before “Passion.” The redoubtable Shankar, Jon Hassel, and Peter’s Fairlight are the supporting players here for the astonishing vocal improvisations of Youssou N’Dour and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, here signifying the suffering of Christ on the cross. Here there is no ebbing of intensity; Nusrat masterfully builds suspense through his sangam improvisation, as Youssou’s interjections cut through to intensify the emotional impact. A devastatingly pure high melody from choirboy Julian Wilkins² punctuates the rising emotional tide. At the end, everything cuts away but Youssou’s cries and Djalma Corrêa’s percussion.

The choral reprise of “With This Love” is introduced by the cor Anglais melody, but Gabriel wisely leaves the Wells Cathedral Boys Choir (recorded by Richard Evans) totally unaccompanied as they perform a heartwrenching four-part arrangement of the melody. The acoustic of the performance space can be heard—there’s an audible footfall or noise at one point that sounds a bit as though someone has stepped onto an echoing stone floor in one of the transepts and been hastily waved away—adding to the overall timeless resonance of the moment. It’s one of the most stunningly beautiful musical expressions on an album full of remarkable sounds. It’s also one of the most fraught; originally intended to accompany the scene where a devil in the form of a little girl tells Christ that he doesn’t have to suffer, removes the nails from his body, and leads him off the cross, it was nixed from the final film. Scorsese pointed out that the use of a Christian religious signifier like a boys’ choir would further underscore the blasphemy of the moment and pour fuel on the outrage that was already mounting even before the film was released.

“Wall of Breath” leads us into uncertain territory as Christ is tempted to abandon his destiny, with Kudsi Erguner, Shankar, and the Musicians du Nil building an atmosphere based around a shifting tonality. “The Promise of Shadows” takes us to a dark place with Billy Cobham’s drums and a rising chorus contributing to the feeling that something isn’t right. Despite the title, “Disturbed” seems to lead us into a brighter moment, as Shankar’s violin introduces an intense percussion groove built up from Hossam Ramzy’s tabla, African percussion from Fatala, and looped percussion from Mustafa Abdel Aziz and Said Mohammad Aly. Peter’s Prophet and Fairlight provide a simple melodic line to anchor the groove as the percussion fades out.

“It Is Accomplished” is signaled by a fanfare on the arghul followed by an uncanny shimmer of a vocal yell (uncredited on the album, the original location recording has surfaced which is amazing to listen to on its own. You can hear it in one of my Exfiltration Radio mixes). A triumphant melody built around a simple descending four-note pattern gains depth from Billy Cobham’s drumming, David Rhodes’ guitar, and David Sancious’s Hammond organ as the music celebrates Christ overcoming his last temptation and fulfilling his mission. “Bread and Wine” builds a new melody from the echoes of the old, creating something new in remembrance courtesy of a tin whistle performance by Richard Evans.

I cannot overstate the role this album played in furthering my personal musical development and encouraging me to listen to the world with open ears. And Passion marks a significant moment in Peter’s career, as a culmination of his work with WOMAD during the 1980s and a seamless blending of his explorations of synth textures with collaborative compositions from some of the finest non-Western musicians of the moment. It earned a Grammy Award for Best New Age Album³, and helped to further popularize “world music” as a genre in its own right.

It also helped create a vehicle to fuel the demand; as the first release on Gabriel’s new Real World label, it included advertisements for a series of individual recordings from many of the musicians on the record, plus more of Gabriel’s WOMAD collaborators. Real World is still going strong and has reissued many of those pivotal early recordings, some appearing on vinyl for the first time; we’ll check in on those, among other things, starting next week.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

BONUS: This 2021 performance by the Francesco Albano Open Ensemble of the Passion score is impressive. With all the layers in the original recording, it’s hard to imagine someone pulling off one of the songs live; to do the entire thing in a single concert is kind of mind-blowing.

BONUS BONUS: Speaking of live performances, Peter performed “Of These, Hope” live at the 1988 WOMAD Festival in St. Austell, with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Youssou N’Dour. Sadly there’s no video but the audio in this bootleg clip isn’t half bad:

Footnotes

It’s a good thing he didn’t imagine himself dancing. ↩︎
Wilkins is now the conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s Youth Chorus. ↩︎
Proof positive that this was something new, as the album bears as much resemblance to “New Age” music as it does to Metal Machine Music. ↩︎

Album of the Week, February 15, 2025

Let’s cut to the chase. Why am I writing about an obscure British movie soundtrack in the middle of this series of posts about the Police? I have one good reason: Sting singing “Tutti Frutti.”

Now that I have your attention, let’s talk about movie soundtracks.

Movie soundtracks are profoundly strange, particularly if you never see the movie. There is presumably some underlying narrative or unifying conceit in a reasonably well made movie soundtrack, but rarely does the soundtrack by itself provide a clue as to what happens in that narrative (in this way, at least, Brimstone & Treacle was an exception to the rule). Or the musical selections may provide an idea of the aesthetic of the film; probably the best example of this is the soundtrack to any Wim Wenders movie (Wings of Desire or Until the End of the World).

Then there’s Party Party. A British comedy film in the style of John Hughes, most of the material on the soundtrack is cover songs—many of which are of 1950s rock’n’roll tunes, but some of which are of much later material—by a who’s who of early ’80s British pop artists, including Elvis Costello, Bananarama, Madness, and Sting. I can’t imagine a narrative that would string all these songs together, and my attention span long ago shortened beyond my ability to sit and watch a movie from start to finish. So we’ll have to take the material on the soundtrack solely on its musical merits. Whether this is advantageous to the material remains to be seen.

“Party Party,” by Elvis Costello and the Attractions, appears to have been written specifically for the movie; it doesn’t appear on any of the earlier albums or odds-and-sods collections. This was 1982, the year Elvis released Imperial Bedroom, so the band was at one of its career peaks of musical energy and the lyrics were at his acidic best: “The last thing I remember I was talking to some fellas/Then she said to me she’d have a word with her good-looking mate/And handed me a pint pot filled with Advocaat and Tizer/And I woke up in the flowerbeds of beer and fertilizer.” The sound of the song is baroque in the spirit of Imperial Bedroom but takes its point of departure from Motown rather than the Beatles, with a fantastic horn section over Bruce Thomas’s agile bass line and Steve Nieve’s boogie-woogie piano part. It’s a pretty great opener.

The movie Party Party is apparently set at Christmastime, judging from the next cover: Chuck Berry’s “Run Rudolph Run,” here covered by pub rocker and Nick Lowe collaborator Dave Edmunds. Edmunds always had a taste for 1950s rock and roll, and this faithful cover leans into that lane; it’s well made but not especially eye opening. At least the next cover takes some risks. “Little Town Flirt” was a Del Shannon number before Scottish new wave band Altered Images got hold of it, and you can hear the bones of the song but it’s fully transformed by Michael “Tich” Anderson’s Siouxsie and the Banshees inspired drums on the opening and by Clare Grogan’s adenoidal vocal, as well as the constant heartbeat of Johnny McElhone’s bass. The only part of the arrangement that hasn’t aged well is the cheap synthesizer line, but at least that updates the song.

Bad Manners was a “two-tone” and ska band, but you’d never really know it from this cover of the Coasters’ “Yakety Yak,” at least not the very end when the outro is transformed into a ska number. The saxophones do some mildly interesting things at the end of the verse, but otherwise there’s not much to talk about here.

That’s not true about “Tutti Frutti.” 1982 was not a year in which Sting had great fun, between the collapse of his first marriage and the tense partnership with the Police, so hearing him do a howling, hooting Little Richard impression is astonishing. It feels ungenerous to complain about such a performance, but I have to note that his vocals are not completely in the pocket; then again, neither is the pub rock band that backs him up. They’re convincing at the chugging undertone but don’t quite capture the manic energy of the original. Then again, Sting does a good job of making up for it, especially on the wordless third verse.

Bananarama’s version of the Sex Pistols’ “No Feelings” should feel out of place, given the twenty year jump forward from Little Richard, but the band invests it with a driving energy and just enough handclaps to underscore the 1950s flavor lurking beneath the sleazy punk surface of the original. The band’s vocals pull the song forward to the New Wave moment; you can imagine it being played on radio alongside the Go-Gos.

“Driving in My Car” by Madness is one of the other originals on the record, and was a hit for them on the UK Singles chart. Its energy is squarely in line with the New Wave moment, but the arrangement, with car horns and even dog barks, feels more like a novelty record. More successful is Modern Romance’s cover of R&B single “Band of Gold,” given an electro-pop makeover with synthesizers and Chic-esque guitar, along with the quintessential British New Wave vocals that somehow call to mind a little Erasure mixed with a touch of Duran Duran. It’s a lot of fun in a way that feels like a precursor to Wham!

Bad Manners makes up for the disappointment of “Yakety Yak” with “Elizabethan Reggae,” a piece with a complicated history. Beginning life as “Elizabethan Serenade,” a piece of light orchestra music originally performed by the Mantovani Orchestra, the 1968 reggae cover by Boris Gardiner and the Love People became a hit single. Bad Manners plays it as a straight ska number, and it’s a blast. The same, regrettably, cannot be said for Pauline Black’s version of “No Woman, No Cry.” Her vocal is fine, interesting even, but the leaden arrangement, particularly the joyless bass, take all the air out of the performance.

Sting’s “Need Your Love So Bad” is more successful. Here he proves adept at R&B balladry, displaying the wonderful flexibility of his lower range, and is able to overcome the unremarkable guitar (played by Micky Gee, the guitarist in Dave Edmunds’ band) in a convincing version of the bluesy song originally performed by Little Willie John. The backing vocalists (unfortunately uncredited) definitely help, as does the gospel-tinged piano. Sting knew the material well, having sung it in Last Exit, and he inhabits the pleading lovesickness of the narrator.

The big tonal shift on the second side is the Midge Ure cover of “The Man Who Sold the World.” Ure’s voice strongly recalls Bowie’s, and the late post-punk synths make for a good arrangement of the original, but it’s a complete left turn stylistically, presumably coming at the big plot climax of the movie (I love you, my readers, very much, but I’m not going to spend time watching this movie to find out where the song comes in). The arrangement slowly falls away, leaving just the synths to take the song out. It’s a pretty great cover, just a strange choice here. Chas & Dave’s version of “Auld Lang Syne” returns us to the 1950s-esque world of the rest of the soundtrack with a rockney (their word – Cockney rock) cover of the New Years Eve favorite.

There are a lot of inessential soundtracks out there, but sorting through the chaff can occasionally bring some reasonably good wheat to the surface. Sting’s tracks are probably the best reason to check this album out, but the title track is a great find for fans of Elvis Costello and the Attractions, and “Elizabethan Reggae,” “Band of Gold” and “The Man Who Sold the World” are all highly successful covers. Not a bad strike rate, on the whole. Thankfully Sting had bigger horizons that he was working toward, in the form of one more tensely-recorded record with the Police. We’ll hear that next week.

You can listen to this week’s album here: