Peter Gabriel's debut solo album was quite good, showing an artist coming to terms with his art-rock past while looking forward to what's next. His third album, in 1980, was a brilliant piece of post-punk that established him as both a star and an influential, unique songwriting voice.
His second solo album, sandwiched between these two, is the sort-of forgotten middle child of the trio; certainly, Gabriel (or the record labels) always ignore it when putting greatest hits compilations together, and it lacks the (at least) one killer song that every other Gabriel album owns. 
So is it a bad album? Hardly. Gabriel is too talented for that. But it shows that his Genesis past wasn't completely excised yet, and so the bulk of the album consists of songs that try to water down the sound of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway with modern alternative-rock appeal (and hints of pop). It's an album very much at home with Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, and King Crimson's 1981 masterpiece Discipline; on that last point, Robert Fripp produced this disc.
In short, Gabriel was still finding his voice. Having written his freedom anthem with "Solsbury Hill" in 1977, and not yet at the heights of "Games Without Frontiers" and "Intruder" and "Biko" in 1980, this disc is a fine listen that hardly transcends the way his music and singing can do. But again, it's not bad music, with fans of Gabriel's Genesis work and fans of his pop stuff like "Sledgehammer" likely to find some gems here.
The best song is the punchy "D.I.Y.," with "On The Air" and "Exposure" tied for second. More than the rest of the album, these three are the ones fans should seek out, especially those who are interested in Gabriel and want to explore beyond the compilations. Much of the rest is fairly mediocre, albeit idiosyncratic and at least mildly interesting considering its composer, but it's one of the last discs that Gabriel fans will need to explore.
What's interesting is how the sound of this music predates Genesis' Duke by two years; if Gabriel was no longer writing with his old band, of course, it seems he still had at least some influence on Tony Banks' songwriting. So, fans of pop-period Genesis may find that this early solo Gabriel will find much to enjoy here too.
Gabriel was well on his way to brilliance and stardom, positioning Peter Gabriel as little more than a transition album from an artist still finding his footing as a solo act.