Peter Gabriel has rarely, if ever, done things by convention. He left Genesis in 1975 just as they were filling larger venues and selling records in places other than just Belgium and Italy. When he launched his solo career in 1977 he abandoned the dull custom of titling albums by naming his first four ‘
Peter Gabriel’, much to the consternation of his American record company. On the third of those albums he instructed Phil Collins to not use cymbals, purely to disrupt the drummer’s natural inclination to punctuate rhythms with them.
For the 56 years Gabriel has been making music for a living he has seemingly trodden his own path - and at his own pace. Which, invariably, has been glacial. Those first solo albums came along at a clip – all four released in the space of five years - and even the gap between the fourth and the commercial triumph that was So was just four years.
But then things started to slow, as a heightened celebrity took Gabriel off in different directions, and not always actually involving making music. The ‘divorce album’ Us appeared in 1992, and its successor Up in 2002, but since then Gabriel has been tinkering at this and that, side projects such as co-founding The Elders with Richard Branson and the late Nelson Mandela, and involving himself in the human rights foundation Witness. There were wildly esoteric ventures, such as Gabriel at his most Brian Pern-like, making music with bonobo apes at an ape language laboratory (apparently, they’re a thing).
Occasionally scraps of music have been thrown out there - offcuts, apparently, gifted to soundtracks (and compiled into the wittily-titled compilation Rated PG in 2019). There have been more substantive ventures, such as Scratch My Back…, an album of cover versions twinned with responses from their originators, …And I’ll Scratch Yours, featuring creditable versions of Gabriel songs by Paul Simon, Lou Reed, David Byrne, Elbow, Arcade Fire and others. The New Blood album presented orchestral retreads of old Gabriel songs, while there has been the occasional tour, such as the surprise ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors co-headline trundle around North America with Sting. But for the most part, those who have stuck with Gabriel throughout his extended silences and dalliances with whatever-takes-his-fancy causes, there’s been nothing net-new to get stuck into. Until today. Well, until January this year, and every month since.
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| Picture: Instagram/@itspetergabriel |
Let me explain: in October 2021 an Instagram post revealed that Gabriel has been recording at his Real World Studios complex with “a few familiar faces” - long-serving bassist Tony Levin, guitarist David Rhodes and drummer Manu Katché. And then nothing. Until last December when Gabriel’s revived ‘Full Moon Club’ digital newsletter turned up with a link to a brief video in which he declared: “I’m now surrounded by a whole tonne of new material. I’ve pretty much got an album ready, and it’s been a lot of fun playing with the band again.”
Expectations raised, on 6 January this year Gabriel released Panopticom, the lead-in single from a new album that would be called i/o. In February came The Court, and then Playing For Time in March, but still no complete album. However, it what can be considered peak Gabriel, the releases were being timed to coincide with the lunar cycle, accompanied by an individual piece of bespoke art to add an extra dimension to the release.
Before long it dawned on most that Gabriel was indulging in mischief. The lunar video updates, announcing the latest release were all part of a plan to put i/o out track by track, full moon by full moon (which meant that, bizarrely, there were two releases in August) - and for free.
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| Gabriel announces i/o on YouTube, December 2022 |
To add to the giveaway, each track was released in two versions - a ‘Dark Side’ mix by Tchad Blake and then later a ‘Bright Side’ mix by Mark ‘Spike’ Stent. In his last instalment Gabriel revealed that this drip-feed had been an “experiment”. Like his friend Brian Eno (who appears on the album), the studio is his laboratory, much as a real laboratory was the creative workshop for his late inventor father, Ralph. It’s where the album - named after the ‘input’ and ‘output’ connections on electrical equipment - explores the interconnectivity of everything, and the perils, pitfalls and benefits of the bigger questions being asked about technology’s future.
Thus, i/o’s release today is something of a literal anti-climax, but there is logic to its approach. “There’s not a huge income from the streaming services,” he said of technology’s present in an interview with Mojo’s Mark Blake. “Some of the themes [on i/o] are about connecting with nature, so it felt appropriate to do something on every new moon, as our ancestors used to.” But while monthly releases via streaming platforms might be uber meta, some musical traditions haven’t been completely jettisoned: “We’re storytellers and we love stories. And there’s more of a story on an album than there is on a single track. But the world is moving in the direction of shorter, faster, and when the tide goes one way it’s attractive to go in the opposite direction. The slower, longer thing has its place, and I’m notoriously slow.”
Listened to as a whole, Gabriel’s distinction between new and tradition makes sense. In both single and complete forms, the new music bears testament to his penchant for fastidious production, intricate layering and disparate instrumentation but, 21 years on since Up, there is a notable maturity to i/o, both in terms of the 73-year-old’s growing sense of mortality, but also his enduring fascination with a world continuing to evolve.
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| The ‘Dark Side’ and ‘Bright Side’ mixes of i/o |
Panopticom directs that from the outset, in Gabriel’s own words positing an “infinitely expandable accessible data globe”, ‘The Panopticom’, which connects like-minded people to “see what’s going on” in order to make the world understand itself better, a notion inspired by the work of groups like Forensic Architecture, Bellingcat and the aforementioned Witness. With a similar bass riff to Digging In The Dirt, Gabriel’s confessional about marital breakdown, it combines grandeur with a singalonga chorus (though the line “Panopticom - let’s find out what’s going on” only just sits on the right side of dodgy…). As the first single off the first new album in 21 years, it sent up a bright red flare that Gabriel had not lost his mojo in terms of writing with meaning, purpose and intrigue. In fact, it’s a hallmark of the entire album, which paints alternating strokes of mood, energy and substance.
The Court tackles the online age with a Cuban rhythm interspersed with the staccato refrain of “And the court will rise”, an acerbic reflection perhaps on the tendency for Internet platforms to be judge, jury and executioner on public discourse, and leads well into the i/o’s title track, which drives one of the album’s core themes, the philosophical consideration of human progress. The track i/o has a genuinely uplifting quality that on repeated hearings suggests an overwhelmingly optimistic view of “the interconnectedness of everything”.
Four Kinds Of Horses is one of the album’s highlights, and a dramatic, ambitious consideration of the contemporaneous themes of spiritualism and religion as they intersect with geo-politics. Developed out of a tentative collaboration with XL Records founder Richard Russell, it emotively combines an orchestral arrangement from John Metcalfe with Gabriel’s core band as well as keyboard layers from Eno. Gabriel’s singer daughter Melanie, who has toured with her father, also makes an appearance (“another lovely moment for a dad”).
Anyone who has seen Gabriel live will attest to his dad dancing, (In Your Eyes, in particular), to which we can now add Road To Joy. It’s another big, brassy pop tune in the manner of Sledgehammer, which funks along foot-tappingly, and is blessed by backing vocals from the Soweto Gospel Choir (who previously appeared on Down To Earth, Gabriel’s theme song for Wall-E). But despite being seemingly infused with happiness, it’s not the clappy celebration of life it might appear to be on first listen. In fact, it based in another side project Gabriel is involved in, dealing with near-death experiences and ‘locked-in’ syndrome. It is nevertheless delightfully engaging. As is This Is Home, late on in the album, which started life as a suggested idea from DJ Skrillex about partying late into the night, before Gabriel turned it on its head by making it about family life, underpinned by a warming, soulful groove.
The similarly up-tempo Olive Tree is about another ‘brain’ project, examining how interacting with nature can broaden the potential for enhancing the human experience. “Part of the theme of this song and of [i/o] really is that we are part of everything,” Gabriel explains, “but these natural worlds of non-human intelligence are out there and we haven’t yet been smart enough to understand what they’re communicating and how they communicate.”
So Much, which features more of Metcalfe’s orchestration and Melanie Gabriel’s vocals, tackles ageing, but not in a maudlin sense. “When you get to my sort of age you either run away from mortality or you jump into it and try and live life to the full,” Gabriel explains. “The countries that seem most alive are those that have death as part of their culture.” Mortality, another theme of the album, appears in the contemplative, Randy Newman-esque ballad Playing For Time, which reflects on the passing of time. Having recorded Father, Son about his dad for the Up album, Playing For Time is a “an elegy of sorts” to Gabriel’s late mother Edith, who was his musical influence. “When my mum died, I wanted to do something for her,” he explained in the Full Moon Club release, “but it’s taken a while before I felt comfortable and distant enough to be able to write something. She loved classical music, so we have a beautiful cello playing there.” The song is full of childhood memories - ”some of which are good, enjoyable and positive and some of which are obviously sad, dealing with loss.”
There is even more emotional heft at work in the beautiful, ethereal Love Can Heal, for me the standout song on the record. Written several years ago (and debuted on the tour with Sting, when it was dedicated to Jo Cox, the murdered Labour MP, whom Gabriel had met at a conference), it draws musically from what he calls a “sensual pallete”. It is a daringly soporific exploration of the role emotions play in human connectivity. “I know I bang on about this ‘emotional toolbox’ and how one of the roles of songs is the potential to change how you feel and change your mood according to what you’re listening to,” Gabriel says. “Hopefully, Love Can Heal has its place in this emotional toolbox.”
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The core PG band - Tony Levin, David Rhodes and Manu Katché
Picture: Instagram/@itspetergabriel |
By the time i/o reaches its 12th and final track, the listener will have been through a range of emotions and music evoking a plethora of life experiences. The temptation is to think Gabriel is just another rock star in his eighth decade processing the years passed, but there is a settled acceptance to his songs, that age is just a number, and that despite the maths, there is plenty to live for. That is certainly the cause behind Live And Let Live, November’s final Full Moon release and a closing song to savour. The very last song to be completed, it’s about “forgiveness, tolerance and optimism”, but also about the positive impact music can have on the human mood.
In his Mojo interview with Mark Blake, Gabriel addressed his reputation for being somewhat dilettante: “If it’s fun and it’s interesting, I’ll do it”. i/o may have taken 21 years to release (in fact some of the songs on it go back even further in their origin), but it won’t necessarily be the another two decades before it gets followed up. “Who knows, I may just keep going,” Gabriel told Mojo, teasingly. There is even more new music in the works, though in what state of readiness - by Gabriel’s standards of perfection - remains to be seen. “I think you can over-saturate people and they get bored with you,” he said with knowing modesty. “One of the reasons I am still able to make a living doing this is that there are long periods of absence.”
All of this might sound like Gabriel is a very serious man indeed. He is, but there has always been a twinkle in his eye. “I’m 73 now, at an age when I might as well just play around and have fun,” he told Blake. i/o may cover some complex even baffling themes, but you could never cause Gabriel of tossing off something generic or formulaic. If anything, he’s still not afraid to metaphorically walk on stage in a red dress and a fox’s head (as he did for real at a Genesis concert in 1972, much to the surprise of his bandmates).
i/o gives firm demonstration that he refuses to become a heritage act in his dotage. “Sometimes you have to take the road that requires fear and courage,” he told Mojo. Doing things differently “makes it way more interesting for me”. He is happy to face rejection, if that’s what comes. Listening to i/o, that is not going to happen any time soon: it’s an album of rare consideration and deep thought about the world reflective of the length of time it has taken to reach these ears. While that world will have changed many times in the 21 years of i/o’s gestation, the final yards of recording and producing it have created an album of beauty, grace, intelligence and wit, qualities that you rarely come across in this day and age.
Peter Gabriel’s i/o is released today on Real World Records
