February 16th, 2010 10:16am
The Strain I Am Under
Peter Gabriel “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”
I’ve been getting sent a steady stream of terrible, mediocre, or forgettable records for many years now, and I think it has given me a pretty decent frame of reference for how bad and boring music can get. In most cases, instinct kicks in and I immediately get a feeling of “Yeah, this is not for me” or “I need to turn this off right away.” Sometimes something will be bad in a way that is amusing, and I’ll share it with a friend for a quick laugh before moving on and forgetting all about it. I tend not to dwell on the bad music.
Peter Gabriel’s new album of covers, Scratch My Back, is one of the most mesmerizingly awful records I have ever encountered. It is terrible in a way that seems unique and special; hideous in a way that is possibly quite profound. His selection of material is fine, but his execution is horrendous, to the point of obliterating the appeal of every song.
Gabriel is a man who has written and recorded many good songs with thoughtful arrangements in his life, but his approach to this material is that of a pompous buffoon who has no understanding of why any of these songs worked in the first place. His bombast is flat, his phrasing is awful, his instincts are poor. He eliminates rhythm and melody from his Talking Heads cover, strips the wit from the Magnetic Fields and the levity from Paul Simon, and performs David Bowie’s “Heroes” in a way that ignores its essential dramatic restraint. There are two modes on this album, and sometimes they intersect: Bloated melodrama and/or clinical depression.
Gabriel’s version of Radiohead’s “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” is a great example of just how much he doesn’t get it. The reason why the original is so moving has to do with the way the guitar parts fall together into gorgeous harmony with Thom Yorke’s lead vocal. It sounds like clockwork, specifically like a Doomsday Clock ticking away. It’s a very delicate piece of music. Gabriel’s version is a morose tuneless mess, with every bit of subtlety, melody, and beauty wiped out completely. It seems as though he thinks these songs are just lyrics arbitrarily paired with music, and that if you just recite the words with any old thing, it’s still the song. NO, PETER! THAT’S NOT WHAT MUSIC IS!!!! You don’t need to be totally slavish in replicating a song to produce a good cover version, but you have to on some level recognize the basic elements of what the song is, and carry that over to your interpretation.
The abysmal arrangement would be bad enough, but his vocal performance is truly appalling, especially for such an accomplished vocalist. Did he take a gun shot to a lung while recording this? Was he bleeding out as it recorded? Is this his death rattle? Is this a posthumous release?
Buy it, if you must, from Amazon.
2/16/10 10:43 am
Maybe we’re expecting too much whose history ended like 21 years ago. The only thing about Gabriel that got me was “Sledgehammer”. I didn’t really see him ever since (until his 2002’s Up) and maybe he shouldn’t have deteriorated his Genesis diaries. Peter Gabriel is not an artist of the third millennium. This song is just as horrible as you described.
2/16/10 4:19 pm
Hahaha. Tell us how you really feel. But yeah, I’ve never heard any of Gabriel’s work and I don’t care to.
2/16/10 4:52 pm
this is a great write up
2/16/10 9:05 pm
Is this the first ever negative review on Fluxblog?
2/17/10 4:56 am
I’ve read this site for years and this is the first proper evisceration I can remember.
hideous in a way that is possibly quite profound
Fantastic.
2/17/10 9:58 am
Oh, my goodness. Sure, I assumed this was bad. But then I read your analysis, and I thought I’d rubberneck this particular accident. And now I wish I hadn’t.
At one time, like twenty years ago, Peter Gabriel was capable of turning some pretty portentous, overblown shit into actual songs: stuff like “The Family and the Fishing Net” and “San Jacinto” somehow managed to work, despite being right on the edge of Marillion-level pomposity. But you’re absolutely right: he missed the point of this song so completely that he sounds like his own cousin, who’s a dental hygienist or something, taking a shot at injecting some “really heavy vibes” into some tunes his son likes.
Thanks, Matthew…sort of.
2/17/10 11:12 am
Oh my. It’s just so wrong on so many levels, isn’t it? I’m really at a loss for how terrible it is, and I can’t believe that I was ever looking forward to hearing this record.
Oh. my.
2/17/10 12:19 pm
How many cover songs have you recorded? You are clearly have advanced knowledge on the subject so please post some copies so that I, and everyone else, can hear what a true cover sounds like.
2/17/10 5:10 pm
You don’t have to be a dancer yourself to notice when the ballerina falls flat on her ass, friend.
2/17/10 7:19 pm
Peter Gabriel has made reams of great of music over the past 30-40 years: starting with Genesis, on into his huge 80’s pop star years, and even well into the mid 90’s. He is also, as a side note, one of the great performance artists of our time, full stop.
But his second-most recent record, “Up,” was a big disappointment for many fans, especially given how long the wait has been between the past few Gabriel records. And then this one. Matt is right - it is just plain bad. As a longtime Gabriel fan, it is hard not to hear it is a bizarre joke that mocks his worst tendencies and indulgences. What the hell happened to this guy?
2/17/10 8:50 pm
It’s fine to not like something, but honestly I think the kind of reaction this album is getting is this funny mixture of arrogant and soulless. Anyway, call me the biggest idiot who has ever lived, but I like the songs I’ve heard from this new album. I’m kind of baffled by how angry every one is getting (a local DJ got harassed for hours after playing “Flume” - it brought tears to my eyes. As though these songs are sacrosanct, as though they are something other than little pop songs.
2/18/10 3:10 pm
I think the headline for a Smashing Pumpkins live review a while back was “Smashing Pumpkins = Shitshow”? Or was that Stereogum…
2/18/10 3:20 pm
That was Pitchfork, actually.
2/18/10 7:01 pm
i’ve been hating on Peter Gabriel for years now with my Phish head friends telling me
“then i really don’t like music.” I really can’t even listen to old/good Peter Gabriel with out thinking about the shit he has done in the last 10 years. What was that one man show shit he did a few years back? It was god awful! The only positive that can come out of this release is for Matthew to rip him a new one. Thanx Matthew.
2/20/10 4:50 pm
i used to love peter gabriel so much that my wife and i followed him on tour up and down the west coast USA for our honeymoon. but matthew is correct - this album is atrocious on so many levels that i admire matthew’s courageous attempt to catalogue them all.
2/27/10 10:31 am
[...] song. In that case, you’ll have to deal with one Matthew Perpetua and what is most likely the first documented critical attack in the history of his Fluxblog. For the record, I totally agree with Matthew: This. Is. Hideous. MP3: Peter Gabriel [...]
4/5/10 3:02 pm
I go back to the old days, I saw the first Genesis performances in the US circa 72-73.
Post-Genesis the first 3 albums really bored me. Then Security which had quite amazing writing. And a good deal of the perverse humor that made pieces like Supper’s Ready a landmark. So had 2 songs that were not sellouts. After that, anything I’ve bought of his has been played once and left to gather dust (and that’s just out of respect).
I think his desire to create a ‘world music’ and a ‘message music’ sort of erased the lovable English eccentricity that drove Genesis and the best of his early solo work.
4/16/10 3:17 pm
It stinks. My wife bought it and I had to listen. I wanted to throw it out of the car. Then she says how great it is. I couldn’t agree more with this review. It’s a steaming pile of rubbish on a pile of rubbish. torture.