Categories : Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 4 / 5 Reviewer: Trent Depue |
Eight years after his most recently released studio material, the often eccentric Peter Gabriel is taking on a new and ambitious project in the form of a covers album, which will eventually see a companion record featuring all of the covered artists here performing some of Gabriel’s works. This arrangement makes Gabriel’s title choice of, Scratch My Back anything but cryptic, and makes the rumour that the companion will be titled I’ll Scratch Yours just as obvious.
Using the word ambitious to describe a covers album may not seem appropriate until the project is examined. Gabriel opts to cover a rather eclectic body of work, ranging from such classic artists as Neil Young, Paul Simon and David Bowie, to alternative and new wave rock the likes of Radiohead and Tallking Heads, all the way to modern indie rock and folk from Arcade Fire and Bon Iver. And given the nature of the collection, a covers record could easily end up being all over the map stylistically. However, the brilliance in Gabriel’s work comes from not simply making facsimiles of the originals, but rather in putting his own conceptual spin on the entire body of work. In this case, down tempo orchestral pieces are the flavour, featuring no drums or guitar at all; an idea that tends to give most of the songs an epic quality, with the exception of Arcade Fire’s ‘My Body is Cage,’ which is more restrained than the original.
For some songs the transition from original to Gabriel version leaves the essence of the original more or less intact – Bon Iver’s ‘Flume,’ Regina Spektor’s ‘Apres Moi’ and Randy Newman’s ‘I Think it’s Going to Rain Today’ are examples. On the other hand, there are those that become all but unrecognizable after Gabriel has his way with them. Paul Simon’s ‘The Boy in the Bubble’ and David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ fall into that category.
Overall, the most telling aspect of Peter Gabriel’s concept is that as you listen to the record, you find yourself more interested in that concept and less interested in whether each individual song is better or worse than the original. For the most part, the verdict is that they’re just different, a decision that neither damns Gabriel for ruining someone else’s material nor overshadows an original work by another artist. And hopefully, when the time for the companion record comes, these twelve artists can do justice to Gabriel’s songs in the same way he has done justice to theirs. Here’s hoping that Bon Iver covers Shock the Monkey!
