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Scratch My Back: Special Edition | 
| Artist: Peter Gabriel
Label: Virgin
Category: Music
List Price: £18.99
Buy New: £15.97
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New (12) from £15.97
Seller: mdo-uk
Rating:  60 reviews
Sales Rank: 1596
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 5.7 x 5 x 0.5
EAN: 5099960797629
ASIN: B002ZCJBGK
Release Date: February 15, 2010
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Tracks:
Disc 1
| • | Heroes | | • | Boy In The Bubble, The | | • | Mirrorball | | • | Flume | | • | Listening Wind | | • | Power Of Heart, The | | • | My Body Is A Cage | | • | Book Of Love, The | | • | I Think It's Going To Rain Today | | • | Apres Moi | | • | Philadelphia | | • | Street Spirit (Fade Out) |
Disc 2
| • | Book Of Love, The | | • | My Body Is A Cage | | • | Waterloo Sunset | | • | Heroes |
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 60
 End of the line March 17, 2010
Stan Oliver
Imagine the scenario - you are approaching your 60's with your reputation assured but creativity waning. How do you pass the time? How about an album of covers? But that would be too obvious, so let's have a angle - a reciprocal deal with other artists. Bingo!
This album highlights all that is bad about Gabriel. It's lazy and it's showbiz. The tracks meld into each other - hardly surprising as they all receive almost exactly the same treatment. Start with tinkly piano or sparse strings and low voice and then get louder, usually with the voice going up an octave on verse 3.
The orchestral arrangements are absolutely bog standard - the kind of stuff that you pay someone to do by the minute. Together with Gabriel's synthetic-soul voice, this treatment manages to remove every last ounce of emotion from the songs. It is a pastiche of a format, sounding emotive but containing nothing.
Some are truly diabolical - for example Heroes, where the altered chordal progression purges the song of all it's power. Others are less disastrous, but as a whole, this is dreary, pretentious and lazy.
 Something very different March 15, 2010
Lauren W (Co Armagh)
Not quite sure what I expected from this Album but it is brillant. Very different, quite haunting and memorable. Would love another album along the same lines but with bettter known songs for example what about a kate bush number?
 An album that grows on you and testament again to Gabriel's creative genius March 14, 2010
sunjos44 (UK)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Ok, first off I'm a huge Gabriel fan. First saw him live on his first solo tour when aged 17, and 40-odd years later, my enthusium for Gabriel's music hasn't diminished. Having said that I can take a critical view of his work. So after an 8-year wait, was it worth the wait? Yes, of course but it was an album that had to grow on me. My initial reaction was lukewarm, but the more I listened the more I got into it. I was though completely blown away on my first listening of Gabriel's rendition of 'Book of Love': what a beatiful and emotional song. Check out the videos on YouTube that people have put together using his version. It is a concept album, and you have to remember that: most of the cover versions work - e.g. great covers of Bowie and Elbow songs, some don't. But Gabriel isn't scared to try out new things. Give the album a chance, it will grew on you. Listen to Book of Love with your partner - you could fall in love again....
A worthwhile experiment March 12, 2010
Peter Lee (Manchester ,United Kingdom)
This isn't your "normal" covers album... As with some remakes of films, Peter has "re-imagined" the songs here, stripping out their drums and guitars, often slowing the pace dramatically, and replacing the normal instrumentation with an orchestra. Over everything there is his wonderful voice, which has aged beautifully.
It helps if you forget that these songs are covers when you listen to them. I'm a huge fan of Elbow, and as "Mirrorball" is one of my favourites of theirs I had already anticipated how it would sound with PG singing it instead of Guy Garvey, but the arrangement here is quite different to the original song, and at the first listen I wasn't keen on the results, but a second listen was completely different as I loved it. Songs like Paul Simon's "The Boy In The Bubble" are slowed to a near glacial pace, and yet it still works, provided you don't compare the versions here to the originals.
Best tracks? I really enjoyed "Heroes" (Bowie), "Listening Wind" (Talking Heads), "My Body Is A Cage" (Arcade Fire), "The Book Of Love" (The Magnetic Fields) and "The Power Of The Heart" (Lou Reed). Weakest tracks? I have to say the version of "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" (Radiohead) is pretty awful, as PG really can't hit the high notes in the chorus, so his voice breaks badly. This track aside, the collection is a success.
So not Peter Gabriel's best album by a long shot, but if you want to listen to something a bit different, give this a go.
A Really Good Album March 12, 2010
L. Hutchinson (Newcastle Upon Tyne, Britain)
I was both excited and concerned by the release. Excited because it is my favourite musician and concerned because this project consists of covering other peoples' songs. My experience, with very rare exceptions, is that covers do not work. However, I was intrigued and so went out and purchased Scratch My Back. It might interest music fans out there who may be interested in this release but there are two versions of this album. One is the standard one disc release and the second consists of a second disc which contains 4 tracks: remix of The Book of Love, and alternate version of My Body is a Cage, a mix of Heroes and a song which does not appear elsewhere and that is Waterloo Sunset.
Now, for me the first possible hurdle and certainly the thing which will more than likely cause my view on the merits (they do say first impressions count), or lack thereof, for this album is the opening track, Heroes: a song famously by David Bowie, co-written with Brain Eno and is one of my all time favourite songs. A blaringly undiluted production of guitars, percussion and synthesisers create an un-pompous grand and heroic sound and although backed with some melancholy lyrics and a singer sounding almost desperate there is an undoubtedly heroic feel throughout and a song that really gets me excited. Despite having heard it on many, many occassions it still excites me to this day, giving me butterflies.
Peter Gabriel's version goes in the total opposite direction, in the sense that the original gives me total joy whereas this version is completely emotional. I almost felt like crying when listening to it. It is a brilliant version and my affection, although apparent first time around, grows with repeated listening. It would to be too much to say that it will replace my fondness for the original but it comes very close. It is apparent that one cannot compare one to the other as they are conveying both the same message in a different way as well as conveying something completely different simultaneously.
Gabriel's vocals are beautiful to listen to. His tones both warm, deeply emotional and emotion driven are truly effecting. It is as if he trying to convince himself that one can be a hero and is pleading for the truth to come forward to show this is the case. It really stirs up in me those memories I have when I have felt completely useless and I was boarding on tears when listening to this. It was only the orchestral undertone of the song that prevented me from doing so. As the song progresses the strings build the warmth and hope and as such it averts the song tipping over into the cold abyss that feels only moments away. It is a very fine balance and is archived perfectly by the imagination and vocal of Peter Gabriel, the arrangement by John Metcalfe and the talent of the musicians involved.
In short, this interpretation of Heroes is truly fantastic and it was clear that Scratch My Back was going to be great a musical experience. Music can be deeply powerful and the opening track demonstrates this magnificently.
The Boy in the Bubble proves, by this song alone, that this project initiated by Peter Gabriel is a worthwhile venture. The original version juxtaposed the dark, troubled political message with Paul Simon's upbeat vocal delivery and jaunty musical tune which made you want to jump all over the place and declare that life is just simply fantastic and all is wonderful. Whereas Gabriel's version is stripped down and the straight dry vocal delivery makes the meaning of the song far more readily apparent and not the easy pill it was to swallow with the original.
Not only that, but the political message of the song is nothing alien to Peter Gabriel and his listeners and so from that point of view the song gels really well and the rhyme of the lyrics do stand out a little but the poetic flavour is backed with the aforementioned vocal delivery as well as simple piano playing and the strings later becoming the structure of the song. Once again the music becomes warmer toward the end of the song but then becomes subdued once more and the welcome piano playing has vanished and therefore creates a subdued downbeat feeling. However, that is not a criticism as it is obvious this is the feeling that is supposed to come across and so, as it has been a success, we have another great emotional and effecting musical experience.
Most of the songs on this album are from bands I am not familiar with and so some of these songs are new experiences to me. Mirrorball is the first of these and I have gone out my way to hear the original version by the band Elbow prior to hearing the Gabriel version. The original is musically interesting but vocally boring. I say this because it sounds like a number of recent bands, such as Coldplay and they all have, in my opinion, the same vocal sound which seems to be an audio version of the colour beige. Therefore, vocally speaking, Gabriel can only do better.
Musically the Gabriel version is fantastic. The strings dominate throughout and are played in a heady sort of way, making this the first truly happy song on the album. There is a light-hearted feel and it as if you have been sitting a stuffy room for quite some time then someone scurries in, opens the windows, turns on the air-conditioning, squirts lemon disinfectant around with wild abandon and we have Mirrorball. The strings swell as the song progresses and we have scurrying violins and all feels well with the world.
Peter Gabriel's vocals are in the normal manner we expect albeit with perhaps greater clarity than heard prior to this 2010 release. In fact, the entire album is all about clarity. The music throughout is clear and certainly nothing is muffled and Gabriel's vocals are distinct. However, the singing style on Mirrorball wouldn't feel out of place on previous releases such as Growing Up and Sky Blue and in some ways even harks back to his later days Genesis days, mainly The Lamb Lies Down in Broadway. This may explain why there appears to be greater confidence in this song.
Flume returns the downbeat feel, this time simple melancholy. The song has a great confident brass accompaniment to the vocals. Although a good song I do feel it is the weakest track on the album.
Listening Wind is more far more interesting and one of the album's greats. It is one of the most haunted songs and deftly evokes the refracted sensibility of a newly politicised terrorist summoning the strength to act and therefore has darkness. However, the vocals are strong, confident and somewhat uplifting which forces the music to catch up and affect this feeling but the aforementioned vocal clarity makes sure the poetic somber lyrics are heard throughout:
Mojique sees his village from a nearby hill
Mojique thinks of days before Americans came
He sees(serves) the foreigners in growing numbers
He sees the foreigners in fancy houses
He dreams of days that he can still remember now
It is one of the stronger moments on the album and is certainly one of my favourite songs.
The Power of the Heart has the simplest, driest and unobtrusive piano playing on the album with a wonderfully sympathetic orchestra. The song is so simple and delivered straight it is rather difficult to write about other than it is quite an optimistic listen and the romantic lyrics are so heartfelt, open and honest it is a great song and another magical moment from this magnificent album.
My Body is a Cage is such a great title and makes me think of Godley & Creme's My Body the Car. The song is incredibly claustrophobic and has a paranoid undertone that it feels as if this is the album's darkest moment. Unlike the previous track this is about the awkward moments relationships can contain, to the uttermost darkest moment. This track will not appeal to everyone and is certainly the album's contentious track. You will either love it or hate it. I happen to like it due to its dramatic structure and tone which allows the song to be just entertaining enough not to become depressingly off-putting. I have a strong feeling that some may even argue that this is the album's highpoint.
The Book of Love is probably the most well known of the Scratch My Back releases and Gabriel's version has already become a classic. It is all about the simple elements that one can experience through love. Lyrically the song is optimistic, deeply romantic and yet has flashes of sarcasm and cynicism and is therefore a great love song as it not slushy.
Musically the track is soothing and Gabriel's vocal is great to hear. It is also a joy to hear him sing some really simple almost childlike lyrics:
The book of love has music in it
in fact that's where music comes from
some of it is just transcendental
some of it is just really dumb
I don't think it will be a surprise to anyone when I say this is not only one my favourite songs from the album but also throughout Gabriel's entire catalogue (come one, Gabriel has done such a great version here that The Magnetic Fields haven't a say anymore).
I Think It's Going to Rain Today has a great piano that warrants the listening alone. Vocally it as if Gabriel is trying to do something slightly different. Lyrically the song is damn right sarcastic and scathing:
Human kindness is overflowing
I think it's going to rain today
And
Tin at my feet
Think I'll kick it down the street
That's the way to treat a friend
When the song ends it feels you leaving cold and empty. It is obvious throughout the album that Gabriel is vocally and musically structuring the songs to the meaning of the lyrics.
Apes Moi starts off dramatically, the only song to do so but the confidence and the drama provided via the strings and brass is toying with us because it promptly ends and the strings plod in with Gabriel's singing giving a truly depressed feel. Gabriel is obviously got into the psychology of the song where it has gone beyond depressing and has a lethargic feel throughout. The entire performance conjures up images of someone just surviving via the very last will of the need to survive and doing so through the last vestiges of remaining energy. For some reason this mental image was of someone living in Russia, it wasn't until later I found out that the original version is by a Russian musician and so I am assuming some of that flavour is seeping though Gabriel's reinterpretation.
Gabriel must have felt the most comfortable with this song than any other on the album because he really throws himself in it and let himself go loose, "screaming" in a way he hasn't done since Passion.
Philadelphia is a song from the film of the same name. So far the album, despite having some light-hearted moments, has been quite downbeat and in some cases boarding on depressing but it only and finally makes its toll by the time we reach this track. Although the track is a great performance from all concerned when I got into the first minute of Philadelphia I was yearning for some relief. At this stage the album needs it. Sadly we do not get it.
By the time we get Street Spirit the downbeat experience which really impressed me with the start of the album has really taken its toll by the time we come to the end. The final track is dripping with angst and despair. As such, listening to the entire album in one go can be a truly overwhelming experience and as such if you do decide to listen to all twelve tracks in one sitting, only do so if you are made of stern stuff. Otherwise, take it in little chuck sizes.
For this reason I give the album 4/5. All songs are great but it could have done with an uplifting finale.
Listening to the second CD (for I bought the two-disc version) was a huge help as The Book of Love proved to be the great relief that was needed. Waterloo Sunset was great to listen to and actually would have been a great way to the end the proper album rather than Street Spirit which borders on depressingly suicidal after having gone through the depressing Philadelphia in order to get there.
Don't get me wrong, Gabriel's version of Sunset isn't upbeat in the sense of Sledgehammer or Steam but it would have been uplifting enough for it to remain coherent with the rest of the album.
Scratch my Back is a great album and one I am pleased I purchased. I'm only disappointed that what should have been the final track has been relegated to an optional second disc.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 60
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