Take cover! The new Peter Gabriel album Scratch My Back is a mixed bag of golden oldies and modern day artist songs. Mainly orchestral and sometimes radically reworked Gabriel tackles the songs with a mixture of glee and respect. The more subdued songs stand out - the melancholic piano and cello add texture to a slowed down version of Paul Simon's The Boy in the Bubble, and the strings in the Talking Heads' Listening Wind wrap the vocals like a comfy blanket. Pity that I Think it's Going to Rain Today sounds a bit hoarse, like a cleaned up Tom Waits vocal - you can blame engineer Tchad Blake for that perhaps.
Gabriel asked John Metcalfe to lend a hand as an arranger and the influence grand noise producer Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd's The Wall, Lou Reed's Berlin) can be heard in Mirrorball.
Scratch My Back sounds very much like a Peter Gabriel album. But please let the next one will actually be one.
Scratch My Back is released in the UK and Europe (Feb 15th), Canada (Feb 16) and the USA (March 2nd).
Tracks:- Heroes (David Bowie)
- The Boy in the Bubble (Paul Simon)
- Mirrorball (Elbow)
- Flume (Bon Iver)
- Listening Wind (Talking Heads)
- The Power of the Heart (Lou Reed)
- My Body is a Cage (Arcade Fire)
- The Book of Love (The Magnetic Fields)
- I Think it's Going to Rain Today (Randy Newman)
- Après Moi (Regina Spektor)
- Philadelphia (Neil Young)
- Street Spirit (Fade Out) (Radiohead)
A future deluxe edition come with an extra disc with one non-album track, the Kinks' Waterloo Sunset, and three remixes:
- The Book of Love (Remix)
- My Body is a Cage (Oxford London Temple Version)
- Waterloo Sunset (Oxford London Temple Version)
- Heroes (Wildbeest Mix)
MP3: Peter Gabriel - Flume
MP3: Real World Podcasts - Scratch My Back
(the stories behind Peter's recordings of Heroes, The Boy In The Bubble, Mirrorball and Flume)
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