Slowburn

Peter Gabriel at Real World Studios
Picture: Peter Gabriel/Arnold Newman

There is no statute on how frequently musicians should release new material, either to satisfy their own creativity, stay relevant or just to pay the bills. Paul Weller’s Fat Pop (Volume 1), released back in May, was his fourth album in as many years. As I wrote at the time, you could hardly call that a purple patch, as over three decades he’s produced a prolific 16 solo releases, roughly one new album every two years.

So whisper it quietly, but at the other extreme of this creativity, Peter Gabriel is working on a new solo album. The shocker here is that his last full collection of new material was, Up, released in 2002. That was only followed by his Scratch My Back project of cover songs set to orchestral arrangements, and the New Blood reworking of his own older songs, again with orchestral backing. That, a couple of compilations, one or two soundtrack contributions and the largely forgettable 2016 single I’m Amazing with Sting (mainly to promote their double-header tour), has been it. For those who follow Gabriel closely, the absence of any new work for the better part of 20 years has been accepted as simply part and parcel of his glacially slow recording process, combined with dilettante interests in the myriad causes that activate him. 

No-one could ever accuse Gabriel of not upholding the less-is-more approach. His seven studio albums released over 44 years are all as distinct as each other, never derivative and always inventive. It’s just that you wish an artist as creatively vivid as Gabriel would step it up a bit. Work on that last album, Up, began some seven years before it appeared, and its predecessor, Us, came out in 1992, though there were soundtrack projects and the Millennium Dome show Ovo, in the middle of that. 

So now Gabriel has apparently told the Italian magazine SPECCHIO that a brand spanking new album is “happening” and that “it's closer than you think", confirming that he’d been working with his usual coterie of musicians over the last few weeks in the studio on “at least” 17 new songs. That said, it’s safe to assume the album will not be out before 2022, making it exactly 20 years since Up. Thankfully the 71-year-old Gabriel is regarded as that much of fixture in the rock firmament that few would ask “Peter, who?” when said release finally dropped. You wouldn’t, either, want to pre-empt it: you’d hope that with a gestation period as epically long as this next one has had, it would be expected that the wait is worth it.

Back in May - not long after the latest Weller album appeared - I blogged about the 35th anniversary of Gabriel’s seminal pop album So being released, noting that it was a commercial peak for a musician who, despite being an early devotee of The Beatles and Otis Redding, has always been seen as being on the fringes of the mainstream. Until So came along, with its slew of hits like Sledgehammer, Don’t Give Up (with Kate Bush), Big Time and In Your Eyes, Gabriel had been a well regarded but sporadic commercial success. Tracks like Solsbury Hill and Games Without Frontiers were moderate chart hits, but singles were not really his thing until So, ironically at the same time as his former band, Genesis, commenced their period of imperial MTV rotation in the mid-80s (and were it not for a bout of COVID-19 in the camp, I would have been seeing them for one last time this week at the O2 Arena...). 

Gabriel even seemed to enjoy his fame, but it often became seen as a platform for his non-musical interests, especially human rights and environmental causes. I’ve never had a problem with Gabriel pursuing those interests, but as with so many of his generation, it’s the music that drives the appeal, and always has done. So news of new material - finally - is by parts pleasing and anxiety-inducing. You hope it will be good (and given the body of Gabriel’s work over 54 years as a recording artist, it should be), but just like the Bond film No Time To Die’s protracted delays, you hope that the established standard is maintained. My guess is that Gabriel will deliver something customarily intriguing and intelligent. And you can certainly bet that it won’t be like anything any of his peers have continued to produce.