Peter Gabriel's lament for the times-preview all songs here

I have loved Peter Gabriel's stuff since I first heard an early Genesis song of his on an edgy FM station circa 1973....

He is still relevant...and has done it again.

And reinvented "it," of course.

When I heard his new CD, "Scratch My Back," was cover versions of songs like (for starters) Bowie's "Heroes," I was ecstatic.

Then I read about covers of Arcade Fire, Radiohead, Talking Heads.

!

Bon Iver?

!!!

And about what the sequel would be (The groups Gabriel covered on his record, would cover Gabriel next time , as in "...And I'll scratch yours.")

!!

"Off the charts," I thought.

Off the charts in my book, anyway... though it likely won't literally "chart."

But in the back of my mind, I wondered what the tweak might be.. This is Gabriel, after all....I read on, and found they were all orchestral-type versions...with vocals.

So sans guitar or drums, and as Stocki suggests in his review (here), that morphs it into a

" lamenting statement of the state of the world in 2010."

Pro-phetic and prophetic. Gabriel has done it again.

Stocki:

The most inspired for me is Paul Simon’s Boy In The Bubble. Here is a song that has been conditioned in your mind with smiles and suns in its jaunty South African township rhythm. Gabriel turns it on his head and brings out the guttural cry of lament. Yes, it is still the day of “miracles and wonders” but “the bomb in the baby carriage” takes a more profiled place and “don’t cry” becomes the saddest of cries to a generation whose tragic inhumanity to human is revealed in the even more painful slo-mo!

-link

Lament is the tune of the times (U2 has always worn lament well). Check out St. Mike Todd's post on the album, and this point about lament... he even posts the following Brueggemann video on the theme at hand. (see also my label tags for "lament" and "Brueggeman" below):

Providing A Safe Place from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.

From Walter to Peter (Gee, they should hang out). Play some Gabriel previews here.. or below....it likely won't be what you were expecting, even after reading this!:

You can't dance to it.

Or maybe you can.

That may be the point.