Rating: 5/5
Review:
Some excellent Peter Gabriel tributes
This album is a sort of repaying of the compliment by many of the artists whose songs Peter Gabriel covered on his Scratch My Back album in 2010. Whatever you thought of that album (I wasn't all that keen) I'd suggest giving this a try. It's very well worth hearing and there's some great stuff on it.
I really like hearing other takes on familiar Peter Gabriel songs, partly because they are so familiar and a new version really makes me listen to what the song is about again. There are also some genuinely excellent performances here, although which ones you think they are will probably depend on your personal taste. For me, the distinctively Bon Iver version of Come Talk To Me, Paul Simon's largely acoustic Biko and David Byrne being David Byrne in I Don't Recall stand out, and both Arcade Fire and Elbow surprised me by producing really good versions of Games Without Frontiers and Mercy Street respectively. You may disagree with all of that, of course. Similary, lots of listeners will probably love Lou Reed's version of Solsbury Hill, whereas I think he utterly murders a beautiful song which has meant a lot to me for three decades and more. You'll have to form your own judgement.
It's hard to give an overall rating, but there's a lot of really first-rate stuff here and I've given it five stars on that basis. I would urge any Peter Gabriel fan to try this. You'll probably love some tracks and dislike others, but I reckon it's well worth a try and there are a lot of tracks here that I will be playing for years to come, I suspect. Warmly recommended.
No comments:
Post a Comment