Three years ago, Peter Gabriel intended to release a double concept album ’Scratch My Back’ (a collection of covers by Peter Gabriel) and ‘I’ll Scratch Yours’ (the response from the artists whose Gabriel covered a song), but only the first one saw the light at the time. Fans can now be reassured, as ‘I’ll Scratch Yours’ will be released on September 23rd.
On Scratch My Back’, Gabriel covered a lot of people, young and old, from Arcade Fire’s ‘My Body Is A Cage’, Bon Iver’s ‘Flume’, the Magnetic Fields’ ‘The Book Of Love’, Radiohead’s Street Spirit (Fade Out)’, Regina Spektor’s ‘Apres Moi’, Elbow’s ‘Mirrorball’, to David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’, Lou Reed’s ‘The Power Of The Heart’, Paul Simon’s ‘The Boy In The Bubble’, Randy Newman’s ‘I Think It’s Going to Rain Today’, the Talking Heads’ ‘Listening Wind’, and Neil Young’s ‘Philadelphia’. Now, the answer of some of these same artists will be released soon with some noticeable absents: nothing from Radiohead, David Bowie or Neil Young!
A few tracks have been released online already, and you can already listen to Bon Iver, who does a great job at transforming ‘Come Talk to Me’ into a more banjo-oriented eerie-falsetto affair, and Stephin Merritt, who updated 80s electro-pop song ‘Not One of Us’, with his baritone voice and more modest bouncy synth rhythms. Curiously only 40 seconds of Arcade Fire’s cover of ‘Games Without Frontiers’ showed up on Soundcloud,… and it sounds exactly like Arcade Fire!
Here is the tracklist:
01 David Byrne: “I Don’t Remember”
02 Bon Iver: “Come Talk to Me”
03 Regina Spektor: “Blood of Eden”
04 Stephin Merritt: “Not One of Us”
05 Joseph Arthur: “Shock the Monkey”
06 Randy Newman: “Big Time”
07 Arcade Fire: “Games Without Frontiers”
08 Elbow: “Mercy Street”
09 Brian Eno: “Mother of Violence”
10 Feist: “Don’t Give Up” [ft. Timber Timbre]
11 Lou Reed: “Solsbury Hill”
12 Paul Simon: “Biko”