Peter Gabriel - New Blood - Music & Performance - CD

Almost every one of Peter Gabriel￢ﾀﾙs best-laid plans winds up going awry, and so it was with Scratch My Back, his 2010 collection of orchestral covers of some of his favorite songs. He had hoped to have the artists he covered return the favor by interpreting his songs but that project never got off the ground, so he pursued New Blood, an album where he turned that orchestra upon his own songs. New Blood is in every way a companion piece to Scratch My Back; it￢ﾀﾙs cut from the same aesthetic cloth, it's austere and cerebral without being chilly, it finds emotion within intellect. Some songs aren￢ﾀﾙt considerably different tonally than the original versions -- this is particularly true of the So material, with ￢ﾀﾜMercy Street￢ﾀﾝ and ￢ﾀﾜRed Rain￢ﾀﾝ seeming no different in their transition from Synclavier to symphony -- but the ones that are heavily reworked, such as ￢ﾀﾜSan Jacinto￢ﾀﾝ and ￢ﾀﾜIntruder,￢ﾀﾝ are startling, rearrangements that seem to give the songs a new set of bones. New Blood isn￢ﾀﾙt always as astonishing but that￢ﾀﾙs fine: the faithful adherence to melody on ￢ﾀﾜDon￢ﾀﾙt Give Up￢ﾀﾝ and ￢ﾀﾜIn Your Eyes￢ﾀﾝ functions as something of a palate cleanser, and even when the album isn￢ﾀﾙt risky it￢ﾀﾙs always quietly absorbing. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi