Fifty years after “Selling England by the Pound,” the masterpiece of a group with a biblical name – Genesis, first chapter! – whose singer and incarnation he was, twenty years after the release (Up) of a last album consisting of original material, here he comes back to us, his believers, his disciples. Our Peter, who was in heaven. Peter Gabriel himself. Human, very human, holding his head with both hands in the cover photo.
There’s something there. The world will ruin. We just have to see, we can’t see anymore. “In the air the cloud of smoke takes shape / All phones take photos while it’s warm,” the messenger begins by singing. The song is titled Panopticom and “questions the future of a world that no longer knows how to distinguish truth from untruth,” explains Gabriel in the commentary that arrived at the same time as the .wav file and the lyrics, two short ones Days before the new album releases on Friday, December 1sttitled i/o (abbreviation for input/output in English). This should be a call to see clearly, to clear the “cloud” (the digital as well as the climate): “Panopticom, let’s find out what’s going on / Panopticom shows how much is real”.
The mission
That is the mission. The reason for this tenth solo album from Peter Gabriel, released on his aptly named Real World label. The need to speak, to sing, to reconnect with his adventure companions, the top musicians Tony Levin, David Rhodes and Manu Katché. Also there was wizard ally Brian Eno. And a whole orchestra and choir group. And all of us. So the whole world.
From Panopticom we find ourselves in the dock of the accusers and the accused (of the court): here everything is double, including justice, so blind that it mixes right and left. Even the music tracks are duplicated. There are two mixes to choose from: the Bright Side, lighter and more artificial, suggested by Mark “Spike” Stent, and the Dark Side, where sound excavator Chad Blake goes deep into the low mines.
Our bipolar nature
Interesting concept on paper, confusing to the ears: Who wants to have one experience and its opposite? Instinctively we first strive for the pleasant. Hell is drawing inexorably, but there is something Machiavellian about this false impression of being able to decide. Would this devil Gabriel do it on purpose to reveal our bipolar nature and confront us with an unbearable truth?
The opposite is the case, he says in comments. His view of our blue planet is simply realistic: we are in transit. In the same way that he made the publication of each of the twelve pieces coincide with a full moon, the double disk turns again and again, the planetary movement and the cycle of life: we are born, grow, age, die. “Unpacked memories tucked away / While the clock keeps ticking…”
Prayer time
And if there were a better way, he sings to us in Road to Joy: “Show your eyes, show your teeth / That’s the way to bring relief / Touch my hair, touch my knee / You can wake up every part of me.” “ What if we touched each other beyond touchscreens? What if we hugged each other instead of silencing each other? The next track, So Much, measures the task and establishes the limits: “This edition is limited / There is only so much that can be done.” The thing is, we don’t know what happens next: it ends with “live and let live” who will live and see.
Music accompanies us on this journey. Beautiful, sometimes complex, more familiar than daring. That’s the continuity part: it sounds like Peter Gabriel, with the syncopations that are specific to him, the ballads that rock. The adventure is not there: Peter and his band convince us with their solid and flexible musical presence. At the end the Soweto Gospel Choir comes to pray with the Archangel. It’s about changing the world, but not alone. The mission can only be collective and complete, presupposing inner darkness and outer clarity. Hands outstretched.
i/o
★★★★
Peter Gabriel, Real World