Peter Gabriel Scratch My BackIch mag PG's eigenwillige Art Songs zu seinen eigenen zu machen und ich liebe seine rauhe Stimme. Wer ein ruhiges Album als schöne Untermahlung eines gemütlichen Abends sucht, findet hier genau das richtige.
The songsHeroes
The best-known song on Scratch My Back and therefore quite probably the bravest choice as the record's opener, this Bowie anthem is slowed right down, in the process shorn of its confidence and swagger. But the melancholy begins to evaporate as the song progresses, the scurrying orchestrations raining down columns of sunlight by the close.
The Boy In The Bubble
Another audacious choice and again the pace is near-funereal and the arrangement sparse. Stripped of the bounce of Paul Simon's original, the song takes on a contemplation and poignancy that wasn't always apparent. When Peter sings "These are the days of miracle and wonder", the incredulity in his voice is nothing short of palpable.
Mirrorball
"Dawn gives me a shadow I know to be taller / All down to you, dear." It's abundantly clear why this song, one of the highwater marks of Elbow's Mercury Prize-bagging The Seldom Seen Kid, holds such appeal for Peter. With Guy Garvey's poetic pen producing swooning lines like "We kissed like we invented it", John Metcalfe's surging strings are the equal, giving Mirrorball the big-screen sheen it truly deserves.�
Flume
Quite possibly the revelation of the entire record. A song originally recorded by Justin -Bon Iver' Vernon in the solitary confinement of a snowbound Wisconsin cabin has been utterly transformed. Now the recipient of a grand, near-symphonic treatment, Flume is rewarded by Peter's soaring voice heading towards the heavens, albeit shot through with pain and desolation.
Listening Wind
On the records of Talking Heads, there was sometimes the danger that David Byrne's lyrics might get lost in the band's clever, multi-layered arrangements. Here, on one of the less celebrated songs from their 1980 masterpiece Remain In Light, things are distinctly less cluttered. The song takes a measure of the confusion of a changing world ("He feels the presence of the wind beside him / He feels the power of the past behind him"), revived here by Peter's insistent vocals, pushed along by urgent gusts of strings.
The Power Of The Heart
A recent Lou Reed composition, Peter abandons its author's trademark gravelly delivery for an open vocal performance that, backed by unobtrusive piano and sympathetic orchestrations, places great emphasis on the song's uncomplicated but moving melody. Simple things can be the most profound.
My Body Is A Cage
One of Peter's more recent discoveries, Montreal's Arcade Fire have forged a reputation for the intensity of their performances. Nonetheless, on this track from their astonishing Neon Bible album, Peter has ratcheted the intensity still further - an interpretation every inch as claustrophobic as the incarceration alluded to in the title.
The Book Of Love
Originally recorded by Peter for the soundtrack of the movie Shall We Dance-, this is, like the Bon Iver track, another cult classic afforded the grand, cinematic treatment. One of the stand-outs from The Magnetic Fields' three-disc opus 69 Love Songs, here deeply romantic strings remain unceasingly faithful to Stephin Merritt's perceptive dissection of love's simplicities.
I Think It's Going To Rain Today
The straightest cover on Scratch My Back as it retains Randy Newman's original goosebumper of an arrangement. The revelation is Peter's vocal conversion into something approaching the jaded barfly who inhabited Tom Waits' '70s records, the perfect narrator of lines like "Tin can at my feet / Think I'll kick it down the street / That's the way to treat a friend".
Apres Moi
This reading removes the insularity of Regina Spektor's original - all spiralling piano and spiky vocals - and gives it a true platform, right from the opening flurry of brass and woodwind that sounds not unlike a high-drama film score.
Philadelphia
Bruce Springsteen's contribution to the soundtrack of Philadelphia was the more celebrated, but this Neil Young track was surely the most beautiful. This version marks Scratch My Back's tenderest moment, its gently undulating melody matched by the empathetic delivery of Young's lyrics. Gorgeous trumpet solo too.
Street Spirit (Fade Out)
The album's closing song is also its most unrecognisable - even the most hardcore Radiohead fan would take quite some time to identify this, the final track on The Bends. Every drop of angst present in the original remains, but the discomfort of a young adult in an overbearing world has been replaced by more middle-aged existential despair.