The news on this has been out a while, but the release is less than a month away. The album is called Scratch My Back.
I have mixed feelings about this.
On the one hand, I’m a huge Peter Gabriel fan. (Hell, I even bought Ovo, which is largely an overpriced bag of suck with a few bright spots.) Peter Gabriel III still ranks among my favorite albums of all time.
On the other hand, when artists I like came out with similar albums (Fish’s Songs from the Mirror and Tori Amos’ Strange Little Girls), they sucked pretty hard. Plus I think the “orchestral versions, no drums or guitars” idea sounds more like a lame gimmick than a wisely-considered choice.
Anyway, for an advanced taste, here’s Gabriel covering David Bowie’s “Heroes”. The orchestration is actually more interesting than Gabriel’s vocals here. It reminds me somewhat of John Adams’ “Phrygian Gates”.
And here’s his cover of Radiohead’s “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”. Man, Gabriel’s voice sounds awful, much worse than Tom Waits, but without his pitch or power. I sure hope this isn’t the final version. And the original version of that song is great.
And those two (along with Paul Simon’s “Boy in the Bubble”) were the covers I was most interested in hearing.
I hate to say it, but if Gabriel’s voice is really that blown, maybe he should stick to soundtracks. (His soundtracks for Birdy, The Last Temptation Of Christ and Rabbit-Proof Fence were all excellent.)