So.

Over at Miss Von's I made a couple of cracks about the disappointment in Peter Gabriel's new album, and what the hey, since someone gave me the keys to this bloggo, thought maybe I'd do a Friday I'm In Meh Music Post about it.

Gabriel just released an album of covers, called Scratch My Back.  I'm not a huge fan of cover albums, especially the tripe done by people like Rod Stewart.  On the other paw, Patti Smith's Twelve is a total blowout, excellent songs done with style and and raw passion.  So, you know, it's Gabriel, so at the least, there should be some good polyrhythmic instrumentation, right?

Yeah, not so much.

1.  Heroes.  Lamest cover of the Bowie classic.  I saw Jakob Dylan's band do a cover of this and it blows this version out of the water.  Muted, too slow, under-instrumented, big fakey string section, and PG over emotes the lyrics.  Tries to build to epic, but even the patented Gabriel yelping toward the end can't pull it out of it's death spiral.   Bleagh out of ten.

2.  The Boy In The Bubble.  The Paul Simon song.   Just PG on vox and piano.  Odd to think folk rocker Simon out-world beats Gabriel on the original.  No real emotion in the lyrics, no real interest in the instrumentation.  Passes by like elevator music in a methadone clinic, but you remember it less.  Ten seconds after it's over, you can't remember what was playing.  Meh out of ten.

3.  Mirrorball.  The Elbow song, I confess I am not familiar, so I can't compare to the original.  More of that big fakey string section though, and I am not digging it.  No punch to the lyrics, in words or delivery.  Another penultimate flameout. Sounds more like movie soundtrack music.    Outtakes from Wall-E?  LAME-E.

4.  Flume.  At least Gabriel is listening to contemporary artists, this is a Bon Iver song.  But look; we've already got one guy doing soft, introspective semi-folk songs in this vein; he's called Bon Iver.  Why listen to a cover that poorly apes the original? 

5.   Listening Wind.  More World Beat cover, from the Talking Heads.  Gabriel's over reliance on synthesized string sections is starting to put me off my lunch.  hey Remember when Peter Gabriel used to do songs with manu Katche, the drummers of Burundi, or even Adrian Belew?  What, he can't afford session players anymore?  He strips the depth and complexity of the original, leaving his voice, unable to carry the song by itself.  Maybe you shouldn't have passed on that Genesis reunion a couple of years ago, Pete.  0/10.

6.  The Power of The Heart.  A Lou Reed cover.  There IS potential there.  But Gabriel just blows it off with piano and voice.  Again.  I want to hear Lou croak this one instead.  Or maybe a garage band blow it up in triple time and three chords.  But this.... this is getting tiresome, dammit.  There's those damn strings again.  Someone take that MIDI away from Gabriel and put him into a red dress and foxhead.  Jeez, man, remember when you used to do things with dynamics?  I know we're getting older, but this is ridiculous.  coma/10.

7.  My Body Is A Cage.  A song from Arcade Fire?  Why do I feel like the newer stuff he's covering here came from asking his daughter what the  kids are listening to? It almost turns into something, but rather than using a band, he just turns up those damn MIDI strings again.  Moribund, Burgermeister.

8.  The Book Of Love.  From the Magnetic Fields.  Stephen Merritt has a charmingly off-kilter voice that suits his whimsical songwriting.   This might have been kind of cool if he would have done it as a duet with Merritt.  Maybe.  In fact, go get 69 Love Songs, where the original is from.  It's more engaging and entertaining.  "The Book Of Love is Long and Boring.."  so is this song.

9.  I Think It's Going To Rain Today.  An Old Randy Newman song.  Finally, one song where the approach on this album works.  maybe it's that the original was piano and voice, and there was nothing to strip out.   Would have worked better sandwiched into an album of originals, or even on a soundtrack.  He doesn't bring anything particularly new that Newman didn't, but at least the song isn't as meaningless and forgettable as most of the preceding.  But if this was the song that inspired the rest of the album, he should have stopped at the single.  The song to buy if you really want something off this album, and then you can spend the rest of the 13 bucks on beer.  Or Ozzy Osbourne.  Or hell, the first Loverboy album.

10.  Apres Moi.  From Regina Spektor, and I confess that again I am unfamiliar with the original.  Sounds like a good song.  I may search out the original, and trade this one in.

11.  Philadelphia, a Neil Young song.  I fear this one before I even hear it.

 After listening to it... wait, did I listen to this?  It fades like a small, not particularly smelly fart.  It reminds me of the incidental music played before services in a liberal church.  blank out of ten.

12.  Street Spirit (fade out).  Radiohead?  Holy crap, I'm not a huge fan of the subdued Radiohead stuff to start with.  this takes it from soporific into the realm of brain death.  Peter, lowering your voice and making it rough doesn't make it earnest, makes it sound like you spent the previous night drinking and smoking.  maybe you should have, now that I mention it.  at least then, the ennui would be real.  Fade Out already. 

every one of these songs, he backs down into lounge-ish music and delivery, except a lounge singer puts more emotion into them.  Wikipedia tells me that this album was released to generally positive reviews, which I find incomprehensible.  Unless all the reviewers are Pitchforkers.  Or paid shills.

If you like any of these songs, DO NOT get this album, because it will taint your affection for the originals.  In fact, most of these songs are pretty good in the original form, go get them instead.  The most useless cover album in the history of cover albums.  Useless as the remake of The Bad News Bears. As much artistic merit as a paint-by-numbers "dogs Playing Poker" on black velvet.  Music for people who don't like music.

Hey, if you buy the special edition, you get some remixes of some of these songs.   Indulgent, useless remixes of indulgent, boring songs.  Yeah, probably best if you stay away from the special edition.  There is an additional cover of Waterloo Sunset, a Kinks song. It doesn't make me retch.

Now I read that the strings are all real, from a group called the London Scratch Orchestra, not MIDI.  I apologize to the real musicians for the snark.  I still don't care for the way Gabriel used them on this release, and hope that the LSO was not responsible for the charts.  Metallica worked with the SF Orchestra with much better results.  I hope the LSO cashed the check quickly and used it on drugs and hookers.

I haven't been this disappointed in a Peter Gabriel album since So.  I take that back.  I like So about a gajillion times more.  My theory is that the first human changed by an extraterrestrial pod was Peter Gabriel, and then the pod-Gabriel recorded this album.

POSTSCRIPT.  After listening all the way through this album to prepare this post, I slapped myself back to consciousness and threw itunes into random mode, hoping it wouldn't viciously turn right around and play one of these songs again.  It responded by throwing Highway To Hell on.  Well played, iTunes; that will wash this taste out of my ears.  Martini?