Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
When Peter Gabriel released Scratch My Back in 2010, cover versions performed by an artist, which normally has the feel of creativity poverty and a terrible aching of lack of substance, was turned on its head and given fresh, bold and enjoyable lease of life.
The original idea for artists to return the favour and put as much spin as they could on the gabrielesque lyrics may have taken longer than the project intended but time is something that never seems to worry the man who has thrilled generations of fans over and over again. What matters is the final product, the accumulation of ideas and threads into one neat and absorbing packaging. Now Scratch My Back has its companion, the excellent and rightly titled And I’ll Scratch Yours.
The galling thing as a fan of music is when someone does a cover of a particular song, the head and heart are torn in two, you might really enjoy the new version and its arrangement and it then leaves the listener understandably worried where to place the original in terms of affection or worse, the new style might just want to make the listener throw the C.D. under the wheels of articulated lorry and the remains burnt to a cinder inside Sizewell B. Like Scratch My Back, And I’ll Scratch Yours, it is most defiantly the former that wins through, especially with David Byrne’s visionary look at Not One Of Us, Regina Spektor’s phenomenal take on Blood of Eden, Brian Eno’s Mother Of Violence and the legendary Paul Simon giving every ounce of musical ability on Biko, the album stirs great memories and gives some incredible pleasure to anyone who has grown up with Peter Gabriel’s lyrics roaming round their head like a ghostly apparition stalking the moor’s at midnight.
Not every new track suits Peter Gabriel’s indomitable style or his own vision for the song but at least with this type of covers album, two if you count the 2010 release, the originality is sublime and well worth adding to any collection, it might just introduce you to a new way of looking at a particular song.
Ian D. Hall