Up

Nobody could accuse Peter Gabriel of being overly prolific. Indeed, if you discount the substandard millennium effort, Ovo, which Gabriel was heavily involved in, it has been a full decade since his last album proper, Us.

And what has the former Genesis frontman been up to in the meantime? Listening to Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, if you are to believe the evidence of album opener, ‘Darkness’, which kicks in with a cacophonous industrial metal-fest of twisted beats and heavily distorted vocals, before Gabriel’s comfortingly familiar vocal enters the equation. This truly is a song of two halves: one raucous and rasping, the other soothing and almost pastoral. Never predictable, not easily digested on first listen, Peter Gabriel is definitely back.

‘Growing Up’ has similarly syncopated rhythms, coming across like the tribal grooves of some future clan, although it could be argued that the beats take too much precedence over Gabriel’s under-rated vocal talent: sentiment-wise, it is also perhaps a bit syrupy for die-hard Gabriel fans.

The man who gave the world ‘Sledgehammer’ has often being accused of hiding his humanity behind his percussion-heavy compositions, but nobody could argue with the raw sentiment seeping through ‘I Grieve’, where Gabriel publicly tries to come to terms with extremely personal loss. The aching ‘Don’t Leave’, though, is possibly the best song on offer, his voice dripping real yearning and emotion, although the brilliant ‘My Head Sounds Like That’ is a close second, where our erstwhile aloof hero gets down to the nitty gritty of everyday living.

Of course, this wouldn’t be a Peter Gabriel album without ending on a decidedly unusual note, and the momentous ‘Signal To Noise’ fits the bill perfectly, a slow-burning, string-laden affair with dollops of eastern melodies laid just off the beaten track.

So what are we to make of this version of Peter Gabriel’s musical muse? Older, wiser and yet still wilfully eclectic, Gabriel remains delightfully impossible to pigeonhole.