Ovo

Peter Gabriel is the kind of person Sean O'Faolain would have described as having "notions". Ovo, created by Gabriel and a host of others for Britain's Millennium Dome, is a concept album telling an ecological fable/parable with environmental and racial concerns. Granted, it's not an egotistical exercise for the former Genesis frontman - Gabriel was invited to take on the project - yet it remains too ambitious in scope for a single album.

Musically, Ovo encompasses a multitude of genres and stars a variety of guest singers, including Neneh Cherry, Elizabeth Fraser, Paul Buchanan, Iarla O Lionaird, and, of course, Gabriel himself. As you might expect for such a wide-ranging undertaking, only some of it works.

Cherry raps with Rasco on the opening track, 'The Story Of Ovo', and while it comes across like a hip-hop fairytale, there is something endearing about it all the same. Gabriel's own 'Father, Son' is one of the highlights, a fairly straightforward ballad that works nonetheless.

Iarla O Lionaird supplies the celestial vocal for the beautiful 'Low Light', a magnificently haunting piece that showcases the best of Ovo and indeed Real World themselves.

The problem is that Ovo tries to be all things to all men, with elements of world music from cultures as diverse as Celtic and Middle Eastern mixing it up with Asian and African. The result is a slightly watered down finished product, which suffers from a lack of focus. For an album with so much going on musically, it is quite bland, a criticism which could rarely be directed at the Real World label in the past.

Ovo rallies briefly towards the end, former Cocteau Twin Elizabeth Fraser duetting with Paul Buchanan to good effect on the impressive 'Downside-Up' but then you have the overlong, yawnfest of the closing 'Make Tomorrow'.

All in all, a disappointing album that promised much more than it delivered.