Peter Himmelman: The Pigeons Couldn't Sleep : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

“Some things in life go smooth/But they're mostly in a dream,” Peter Himmelman sings in an irritated growl in the opening title song, a slow-blues crawl through razor-wire slide guitar. There isn't much that goes easy in the next twelve songs. But Himmelman, who has made sharp-dressed, stiletto-wit pop records since the mid-Eighties, is no quitter. For every step he takes toward giving up -- the bleak longing of “The Ship of Last Hope” (it sails without him), the waste of precious time in “17 Minutes to 1” -- he jumps back into the fray with the crackle of early Elvis Costello and a sturdy coat of faith. First pressings of this album come with Rock God, a DVD about Himmelman's life on the road, which expands on the truth of that line above. But the single picture of strength in numbers in “If We Could Hold Each Other's Hunger” tells you much more about the best way to make any dream come true.