Considering the slow trickle of completed albums he has released since becoming a superstar in 1986 -- just two albums of songs with vocals, paired with two albums of soundtracks and two live records -- deliberate is expected from
Peter Gabriel
, so the slow, hushed crawl of
Scratch My Back
is no shock. What may be a shock is that
Gabriel
chose to follow 2002's
Up
with a covers album but, like all of his work, this 2010 record is highly conceptual no matter how minimal the end result may be. Designed as the first half of a two-part project where
would cover 12 different artists who would then return the favor by recording their own versions of
's compositions -- the counterpart album naturally bearing the title
I'll Scratch Yours
--
divides neatly between six songs from his peers (
Bowie
,
Paul Simon
Randy Newman
Neil Young
Lou Reed
David Byrne
) and six songs from younger artists (
Radiohead
Arcade Fire
Stephin Merritt
Bon Iver
Elbow
Regina Spektor
).
doesn't dodge familiar tunes, choosing to sing
"Heroes"
and
"Street Spirit (Fade Out),"
but he twists each tune to his own needs, arranging everything with nothing more than piano and strings, a change that's almost jarring on
Simon
's
"The Boy in the Bubble,"
yet it stays true to the undercurrent of melancholy in the melody. Indeed, all of
is stark, sober, and spare, delving ever deeper inward, a triumph of intellect over emotion -- a noted contrast to almost all cover albums that celebrate the visceral, not the cerebral. Immediate it may not be but fascinating it is, and after hearing
turn all 12 of these songs into something unmistakably his own, the appetite is surely whetted for its companion piece. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine