I really have to give Peter Gabriel alot of credit.

Now this is a freakin trip right here.

I just acquired a copy of the new Peter Gabriel record Scratch My Back, which for anyone who didn't know is a set of all covers from artists as far ranging in era as Paul Simon and David Bowie to Bon Iver, Radiohead, and Arcade Fire. And coming soon will be a response record called I'll Scratch Yours where, you guessed it, those artists will be doing a Peter Gabriel cover. Yeah, this is not a joke. I thought it was at first. But it's not.

And I think I really like it.

And the reason is that I think it took alot of guts to do some of these arrangements. Instead of opting for using a rock band, Peter Gabriel does what he does best, which is be totally different. What this means is that he used nothing by an orchestra to back him up. And when you're covering some rock classics, that, as I said, takes a large amount of guts.

One of the best examples is the second track, a cover of Paul Simon's 'Boy In the Bubble' from his totally legendary Graceland album. Simon's classic version is upbeat and chock-full of the African rhythmic joy that made that album so incredible. But Gabriel's new reading is a slow affair that crescendos and grips the heart in a way that you would never see coming from a Graceland-era Paul Simon song. The meaning of the song seems transformed by the sad take, and that's pretty interesting in itself. The concept of a boy in a bubble goes from something you only bop your head along with to something that is about alienation and sadness. Damn.

Now, a pessimistic music lover would probably point out that the best part of this album is the orchestra themselves and not actually Gabriel. It's a valid point, but I really think that his vocals sound great here. Peter Gabriel was never known as a virtuoso rock singer, but the beauty here is that his voice is not what really shines here. It's actually the songs. And for a record of all covers to actually highlight the songs and not the singer is an achievement that could only really be reached by a musician with as much experience and sheer talent as Peter Gabriel.

The perfect example of this is 'Flume' by Bon Iver. Now, doing a Bon Iver cover is gutsy enough. The beauty of his music comes from the stripped-down intimacy that is almost impossible to replicate, especially when you've taken that style and translated it into a piece of music with an entire orchestra behind you. But as he does with every song on this album, Gabriel translates the meaning into something that is just as, if not more, epic then the original. And again, that's a hard tightrope to walk.

Similarly, his reading of Arcade Fire's 'My Body is a Cage' takes a pretty epic band's sound and puts it with the orchestra to make it epic on an totally different level.

I was only going to make this a short post, but the more I listened to it, the more I really had to give Mr. Art Rock some real props for this.

Even if you hate Peter Gabriel, I think it's worth checking out if you like any of these songs. And I'll say that I'm not sure I'm going to just walk around and listen to this on my Ipod, but it's not really that kind of thing. In fact, it's one of those things that I probably won't really return to for awhile. But I don't think it was made as something that was supposed to break sales records or win Grammys. Peter Gabriel has absolutly nothing to prove.
This isn't 'Sledgehammer', designed for having a good time to. It's certainly not party music or make out music or anything else. If nothing else, I think it's just a good exercise in arrangement. And that, like most of the rest of Peter Gabriel's incredible catalogue, is pretty freakin cool.