I’m a Peter Gabriel fan from way back.  I think he’s a great songwriter, a great musician, a great vocalist.  Some of his work takes time to digest, though.  For the majority of So to be so readily accessible, the follow-up, Us, required a couple of listenings to fully appreciate it.  His next album, Up, from 2002, a full ten years later, needed more than a couple of listenings.  Even die hard fans still find Up a challenge.  I had read quite some time ago Gabriel was working on a covers album, and was working on an album of his own songs to be covered by other musicians.  That project was to be a double CD:  Scratch My Back, being his covers, and I’ll Scratch Yours being his songs covered by others.  They are now to be released separately.  Somehow I missed Scratch My Back‘s March release.  Where have I been?  In my own little world, my friends, my own little world.

I didn’t find out about the album until I was doing some searching on YouTube for Lou Reed.  That’s right, I was watching some old Lou Reed performances and that’s when I discovered Peter Gabriel covered the Reed penned “The Power of the Heart”.  I listened to Lou’s version then clicked over to Gabriel’s take on the song.  I instantly fell in love with it.  A few clicks later I learned I missed the album’s original release, and I remedied that as quick as I could.

Unlike some cover albums from veteran rockers, you won’t find anything from The Great American Songbook, or classics from the annals of rock n’ roll or pop, other than David Bowie’s “Heroes”, Paul Simon’s “The Boy In the Bubble”, Talking Heads’s “Listening Wind” and Neil Young’s “Philadelphia”, but are “Listening Wind” and ”Philadelphia” really classics?  It’s a personal judgement call.  The majority of the songs are more modern and cover some varied ground:  Bon Iver, Radiohead, Regina Spektor, and even Randy Newman.

Gabriel sounds great throughout, as do the arrangements.  He set up some rules for Scratch My Back, one of which was no guitar or drums.  These are orchestral arrangements, and they sometimes bring moments to the whole affair that make you think the album should have been called Scratch My Head.  Only a couple of times.  Maybe it helped that I wasn’t familiar with the original version of most of the songs.  When I first heard Gabriel’s interpretation of “Heroes”, I thought it was different, yeah, but that it didn’t bring anything new to it.  On repeated listens, though, the song opened up to me.  Much in the same way as his cover of Simon’s “The Boy In the Bubble”; Gabriel strips the song of its original bouncy nature, and it was jarring on the first play.

That brings me to the first of two problems I have with Scratch My Back.  This is an overall somber affair.  There are lively moments here and there (more often in Gabriel’s voice than in the music), but it can play as a drag.  Each song individually is good, taken as a whole, the album is nearly too much.  You have to be in the right mood for these love songs.  If you’re a sucker for a good love song, as I am, that right frame of mind will hit you sooner or later, and the album may even help get you there.

Scratch My Back goes on for three songs too many.  Newman’s “I Think It’s Going To Rain Today”, Young’s “Philadelphia”, and Radiohead’s “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”  should have been cut and maybe the album wouldn’t drag to its finish.  Other than those three songs, the rest of the album is a winner.  “Listening Wind”, “The Power of the Heart”, “The Book of Love”, and “”Après Moi” are the standouts that earn my repeated listenings.  Scratch My Back is a little different, a little odd, very accomplished, and very good.

4 out of 5
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