Artist: Peter Gabriel
Album: Scratch My Back
Genre: Rock
Release Date: 2010
Audio Format:: FLAC (tracks) 24 bit, 48 kHz
Duration: 53:18
Total Tracks: 12
Total Size: 588 MB

Tracklist:

01. Peter Gabriel – Heroes (04:07)
02. Peter Gabriel – The Boy in the Bubble (04:24)
03. Peter Gabriel – Mirrorball (04:48)
04. Peter Gabriel – Flume (02:57)
05. Peter Gabriel – Listening Wind (04:22)
06. Peter Gabriel – The Power of the Heart (05:55)
07. Peter Gabriel – My Body is a Cage (06:12)
08. Peter Gabriel – The Book of Love (03:52)
09. Peter Gabriel – I Think It’s Going to Rain Today (02:34)
10. Peter Gabriel – Apres Moi (05:12)
11. Peter Gabriel – Philadelphia (03:44)
12. Peter Gabriel – Street Spirit (Fade Out) (05:05)

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Considering the slow trickle of completed albums he has released since becoming a superstar in 1986 — just two albums of songs with vocals, paired with two albums of soundtracks and two live records — deliberate is expected from Peter Gabriel, so the slow, hushed crawl of Scratch My Back is no shock. What may be a shock is that Gabriel chose to follow 2002’s Up with a covers album but, like all of his work, this 2010 record is highly conceptual no matter how minimal the end result may be. Designed as the first half of a two-part project where Gabriel would cover 12 different artists who would then return the favor by recording their own versions of Gabriel’s compositions — the counterpart album naturally bearing the title I’ll Scratch Yours — Scratch My Back divides neatly between six songs from his peers (Bowie, Paul Simon, Randy Newman, Neil Young, Lou Reed, David Byrne) and six songs from younger artists (Radiohead, Arcade Fire, Stephin Merritt, Bon Iver, Elbow, Regina Spektor). Gabriel doesn’t dodge familiar tunes, choosing to sing “Heroes” and “Street Spirit (Fade Out),” but he twists each tune to his own needs, arranging everything with nothing more than piano and strings, a change that’s almost jarring on Simon’s “The Boy in the Bubble,” yet it stays true to the undercurrent of melancholy in the melody. Indeed, all of Scratch My Back is stark, sober, and spare, delving ever deeper inward, a triumph of intellect over emotion — a noted contrast to almost all cover albums that celebrate the visceral, not the cerebral. Immediate it may not be but fascinating it is, and after hearing Gabriel turn all 12 of these songs into something unmistakably his own, the appetite is surely whetted for its companion piece.