Review Summary: An engaging identity crisis.
There is a scene in animated superhero series “Invincible” in which an alien invader remarks sarcastically to the titular character upon delivering a sound beating to the guy: “I just fought you, and I think you are quite vincible!” I have a similar gripe with this album’s name. You would expect a record named “Unshattered” to sound monolithic, confident, and self-assured. Instead, it feels like after his full immersion into Trance on previous LP “Dust,” Peter Murphy didn’t quite make up his mind on where to go next. So, he went in every possible direction. For the first time we see a set of outside songwriters involved in making the album, including Peter DiStefano from Porno for Pyros and Eric Avery from Jane’s Addiction. The end result, however, does not (mostly) sound like Peter singing on someone else’s record. Instead, almost every song here feels like a call-back to one or several previous Peter Murphy albums. I thought for a while about the best way to present my point, and the final decision was to just create a sort of catalogue listing every reference to the past that I hear in this batch of songs. There’s a good deal of subjectivity in all this of course, but let’s give it a shot:
Should the World Fail to Fall Apart (1986): Peter’s debut solo record can be clearly heard in the funky melodies and rhythms of the opener “Idle Flow,” which is probably the funkiest song he ever did, also equipped with a nice uplifting chorus. Some other tracks, notably “The Weight of Love,” also go all the way back to the beginning of Peter Murphy’s solo career.
Love Histeria (1988): The ballad “Piece of You” melodically is reminiscent of similar slow numbers from Murphy’s second album, such as "Time Has Got Nothing to Do with It" or “My Last Two Weeks.” At the same time, there are of course songs like “Emergency Unit” that go back to classic Post Punk sound and wouldn’t feel out of place on any of the first three Peter Murphy albums.
Deep (1989): “Blinded Like Saul” references the rockier tracks from “Deep,” while “The First Stone” reminds me of moodier cuts from that album.
Holy Smoke (1992): Not so much direct references per se, but overall relaxed vibe of “Unshattered” matches that of “Holy Smoke” quite closely.
Cascade (1995): “Kiss Myself” with its endearing harmonica melody and overall sunny disposition is one of the references to Peter’s most slick and pop-oriented record, but its self-contained vibe also reminds me of
Holy Smoke (1992), particularly of its opening song “Keep Me From Harm.” One more call-back to “Cascade” is “Thelma Sings to Little Nell” the warmest ballad on the album with extensive accordion passages and soft guitar.
Dust (2002):: Strangely enough, the album released just two years before “Unshattered” is not really referenced until the closer “Breaking No One’s Heaven” with its Eastern melodies and spoken word section in the beginning. The chorus to this song, however, is a sharp detour to poppier sound of
Cascade (1995).
Future releases: Indeed, this album is so over the place that it contains a couple of references to albums Peter Murphy had yet to release at the time. For instance, the first line of “Give What He’s Got” that mentions “Xavier’s New Boy,” which is the name of a song from
Silver Shade (2025). Similarly, the line “You’re in every lucky dip, uneven and brittle” in “Blinded Like Saul” foreshadows the song “Uneven and Brittle” from
“Ninth (2011)”
Other bands songs (plagiarism (?)): Now, am I tripping, or is the main melody of “Face the Moon” a slightly retreaded melody of the song “Long Gone Day” from
Mad Season (1995) by the eponymous short-lived super group featuring the late Layne Staley from “Alice in Chains”? The chorus is a completely different affair though, feels like it belongs to an entirely different song.
So, this is the tale of an album that reminds me of a Sponge Bob episode where poor Bob was having an identity crisis, kept changing shapes and, at some point, morphed simultaneously into Patrick, Squidward, Sandy, and Mr.Crabs. Involvement of four or five outside songwriters who were all trying to emulate the “classic” Peter Murphy sound resulted in an album that lacks a clear artistic direction and attempts to go everywhere instead. The main issue for me is that while all the songs are quite nice, most of them sound like lesser copies of something that was done better on Peter’s previous albums. To me, only the wonderful atmospheric “Give What He’s Got” feels essential, plus a couple more sweet songs like the opener. An album like that could’ve sounded like a compilation of greatest hits, but instead it feels like a collection of B-sides. At the same time, this deliberately disjointed feeling provides for a fun and engaging listening experience, if you like to track down all the influences and references. “Unshattered” may feel duct-taped and undefined, but it can be a strange and unique source of amusement.
