Peter Gabriel – remember him? This is how it goes.

Release Date: 1st December 2023

Label: Virgin Music

Format: digital / CD / vinyl

Old PG has been tootling around with the songs that make up i/o for some considerable time. With some effort to think that far back, the last set was 2002’s Up, since when there’s been “stuff coming out, stuff going in,” as he sings in the title track.

By comparison, the last twelve months have seen a veritable tsunami of Gabriel activity, with the Full Moon releases drip-feeding new songs online in a bizarre form of Chinese water torture. Previewing the Dark Side and Bright Side – two mixes of each of the 12 tracks – some of us have resisted the temptation to exist on what might be a trifle unfair to call scraps from the table and hang on for the full album in finished form. “It’s a little like getting a Lego piece each month,” Peter explains, or possibly justifies. And almost as frustrating as standing on one of the buggers, but at last it’s time to stand back and admire the final, completed creation.

As well as the pair of mixes of each track (Makr ‘Spike’ Stent handling the Bright Side and Tchad Blake on the Dark Side, plus Hans-Martin Buff delivering a third option with the Dolby Atmos, In-Side mix) i/o sees PG collaborating with visual artists, much of which formed part of the production on the recent tour. And having said all that, as Freddie would say from the stage of the Milton Keynes Bowl in 1982, about the furor that surrounded Queens’ Hot Space album, “it’s only a bloody record!”

Of the dozen core tracks, many made the setlist on the Gabriel tour that bravely focussed on the bulk of the new material. We witnessed at Manchester AO Arena earlier this year which toured Europe and North America in typically spectacular PG style. A sombre opening passage sees Panopticon explode into life, jeremy bentham’s panopticon concept dealing both enlightening and chilling inspiration.

With his trusty right hand men – guitarist David Rhodes, bassist Tony Levin and drummer Manu Katché – supplemented by a huge cast, the familar Gabriel – tin can percussion and rhythms – shakes a leg on The Court. along with “a rambling impressionistic lyric.” The stark Digging In The Dirt-esque arrangement might be the first of several musical touchstones with his library of work. Playing for Time – anyone else hear Washing Of The Water – is pretty representative of the focus on the passage of time. We’re also hearing see Father Son in the beautiful weariness topped with an inspirational, cloud parting, string climax. The simple piano on So Much – again, contemplating “so much unfinished business” the sense of mortality is given a Hamill-esque lyric yet most un-Hammill-like delivery; almost like singing with a last breath.

We’ve previously mentioned how Road To Joy seems to combine the shimmering parts of The Tower That Ate People and the funk of Shaking The Tree. Perhaps the most immediate of the set and a personal earworm where the Soweto Gospel Choir add to PG’s latest Sledgehammer-fused option. “This story has our hero in a coma, locked-in syndrome, in which he’s unable to communicate, to move, or to show what’s going on,” says PG in a statement that might have many old timers thinking back to the story of Rael. “He is brought back to life, one sense at a time. It’s a lyric about coming back into your body, back to life, back into the world.”

It’s also the point where we repeat listen and play the game of comparing the Bright and Dark sides. The Dark Side seems to place a greater emphasis on the rhythmic; bass lines lead and the quirkiness is more pronounced. It could be the funkier ‘Prince’ version where Tony Levin excels where the Bright Side is all smoother edges, less spiky and radio-friendly. A quick dabble with another couple of pairs is less successful in distinguishing much difference? Old ears? Old system? Old school? It’s only a record…..

Meanwhile, sandwiched between the Eurovision bounce of Olive Tree and the lighter touch of Live And Let Live (where the names of Mandela and Tutu invariably spring to mind) the final side of the record brings a curtain down, awash with calm, positivity, the value of memory and forgiveness that all prickle the skin. Gabriel (and many of us, considering mortality and veering toward the bright side). Love Can Heal sees an intimate vocal decorated by a distant ambience and angelic chorus; This Is Home a low key electronic/dub love song to the security of the knowledge of the sanctuary and sanctity of home. However, it’s And Still – a piece of catharsis after the death of his mother – that hits an emotional full house with a remarkable but effective simplicity. “I wanted to write a melody that I thought my mother would have responded to,” he says of a piece that goes beyond elegy.

io leaves as an album that’s packed with consideration and thought. The constant search (or struggle?) for the best way to present his ideas sees PG concede to sobriety yet bathe his followers in a wash of optimism. Evidence, should it be needed, of the work of a master craftsman.

Here’s Road To Joy:

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