Peter Gabriel 'Scratch My Back'

Most remember Peter Gabriel as the man behind eighties hits, ‘Sledgehammer’ and ‘Don’t Give Up’, which featured one of the most groundbreaking video clips of the day and Kate Bush, respectively. I thought he was so awesome back then that I bought a black suit jacket from an op shop and sewed the title of his album onto the back in huge white letters. Try walking down the street in Belfast wearing a jacket with the word ‘So’ on it without getting the shit kicked out of you. It ain’t easy.

Gabriel seemed to go off the rails a little after that, releasing a soundtrack to Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ that had its feet firmly planted in the awkward and rather dubious land we all know as ‘world music’. He tried to claw his way back to the charts with Us in 1992 but since then he’s been pretty quiet, though he did win an Academy Award nomination in 2008 for the closing song to, er, WALL-E. (I shouldn’t mock. WALL-E was pretty awesome. That whole opening 20 minutes without dialogue or music? Gold.)

Now though, it looks like Gabriel is about to experience a cross-generational revival of sorts. It’s easy to forget that back in his Genesis days he used to wear costumes that made the Presets and Gaga look tame, whereas now he sports a shaved head, creepy goatee and crushed velvet hoodie (judging from the sleeve). Scratch My Back is part one of a collaboration with some stunning modern artists. The concept is this – Gabriel covers 12 of his favourite songs, without using guitars or drums. Where it gets interesting is that each artist he covers will return the favour and cover one of Gabriel’s songs in a companion album to be released later this year.

The prospect of this second album (...and I'll Scratch Yours - surely) is pretty mouthwatering. Gabriel's tunes are slated to be covered by Bowie, Paul Simon, Elbow, Bon Iver, Talking Heads, Lou Reed, Arcade Fire, The Magnetic Fields, Randy Newman, Regina Spektor, Neil Young and frigging Radiohead. I don’t think there’s ever been an album featuring that list of talent, so keep your eyes peeled folks.

Sadly, that’s not this album. In the sleeve notes Gabriel bemoans the fact the second album won’t be ready for a while, due to the inevitable conflict of schedules. I get the feeling he’s jumped the gun a bit in releasing volume one and yet again he’s managed to find a pigeonhole for himself that leaves the listener scratching their head. It all starts out well enough, with a sad, moving cover of Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ but the track feels like it should be at the end of an album, offering a melancholic orchestral finish to linger in the mind. This sets a precedent, for the bulk of Scratch My Back is all stirring string arrangements and Gabriel’s whispering, almost spoken vocals. His strange voice is front and centre here, occasionally soaring into some kind of restrained scream. (Which can then break, as on Radiohead’s ‘Street Spirit’.)

Gabriel admits that his daughters chose a few tracks for him, and it’s pretty obvious which ones. His version of Bon Iver’s ‘Flume’ is not a million miles from the original and actually sounds like a song Gabriel might have written. He obviously enjoys Arcade Fire’s ‘My Body is a Cage’ too, turning in a whispering Tom Waits vocal over a terrifying string arrangement. It’s about as close to brilliant as this album gets, the other highlight being Regina Spektor’s ‘Après Moi’, which, disappointingly, is the only song by a female artist he covers. If only his daughters had chosen a few more tracks, this could have been special.

There’s a couple of tracks on here that sound pretty great when listened to in isolation but as a whole, the arrangements are too similar, and the collection suffers under the restrictions of the non-guitar and drums rule. There’s no doubting he’s penned some fantastic songs in his career, which is why he probably should have waited until the companion album was ready to go before releasing this one. Which in truth, is the sister album to a tantalising project we have yet to hear.

Chris Flynn