Peter Gabriel - i/o

 

i/o (Bright Side Mix)

Peter Gabriel's 10th studio album!

First new album in 21 years!

Gatefold double LP w/ obi strip

Includes 32-page booklet plus hi-res album download

"After a year's worth of (releasing online a new song every full moon), I'm very happy to see all these new songs back together on the good ship i/o and ready for their journey out into the world." — Peter Gabriel

Legendary prog-turned-pop star Peter Gabriel started work on his new album all the way back in the mid-1990s and has drip-fed its songs to fans, but the completed album is anything but disjointed. Gabriel's tenth studio album of original material has been compared to both the Beach Boys' Smile and Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy. Both were two records with legendary elephantine gestation periods, notes The Guardian, in a recent review.

All 12 tracks on the new album come with two stereo mixes: the Bright-Side Mix, handled by Mark ‘Spike' Stent, and the Dark-Side Mix, as reshaped by Tchad Blake. There's also the In-Side 3D mix by Hans-Martin Buff.

Patched together from sessions in Britain, Italy, South Africa, Sweden and onstage at Rexall Place, a Canadian arena venue that closed down five years ago, it's to i/o's immense credit that doesn't feel like an album that's been endlessly, if intermittently, reworked over decades. It's all clearly carefully considered, but it still sounds remarkably fresh as it touches, lightly, on a variety of Gabriel's longstanding preoccupations.

On the tour that accompanied the gradual release of i/o's tracks online — one every full moon — Gabriel performed his new material alongside the big hits from 1986's So. If there's nothing here as obviously commercial as Sledgehammer or Don't Give Up, there's definitely a hint of '80s brashness about the horns on the bright-hued Olive Tree and an epic, stadium-ready grandeur to the title track.

Gabriel's interest in music from beyond the west is reflected in the sinuous rhythm of "This Is Home." You would struggle to describe "And Still" as prog rock per se, but its piano, flute and cello certainly trades in the kind of rain-spattered, very English melancholy that was among early '70s Genesis's key modes.

"Anyone wondering at the wisdom of releasing an album consisting of songs already freely available to stream might note that, lunar-influenced drip-fed release or not, it's clearly been conceived as an album: listened to in one sitting, it ebbs and flows beautifully." — Alexis Petridis, The Guardian

The highlight of i/o might be "Playing for Time," a ballad that slowlly moves to a dramatic climax. The lyrics feature Gabriel climbing a hill, as the lyrics of his debut solo single did, but this time lost in memories and the thought of time's passing. It would work perfectly as a grand finale. i/o is so rich in ideas, you hope it won't have to.

Side A

Panopticom

Playing for Time

The Court

Side B

Four Kinds of Horses

i/o

Love Can Heal

Side C

Road to Joy

So Much

Olive Tree

Side D

This Is Home

And Still

Live and Let Live

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