The Strain I Am Under

Peter Gabriel “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”

I’ve been getting sent a steady stream of terrible, mediocre, or forgettable records for many years now, and I think it has given me a pretty decent frame of reference for how bad and boring music can get. In most cases, instinct kicks in and I immediately get a feeling of “Yeah, this is not for me” or “I need to turn this off right away.” Sometimes something will be bad in a way that is amusing, and I’ll share it with a friend for a quick laugh before moving on and forgetting all about it. I tend not to dwell on the bad music.

Peter Gabriel’s new album of covers, Scratch My Back, is one of the most mesmerizingly awful records I have ever encountered. It is terrible in a way that seems unique and special; hideous in a way that is possibly quite profound. His selection of material is fine, but his execution is horrendous, to the point of obliterating the appeal of every song.

Gabriel is a man who has written and recorded many good songs with thoughtful arrangements in his life, but his approach to this material is that of a pompous buffoon who has no understanding of why any of these songs worked in the first place. His bombast is flat, his phrasing is awful, his instincts are poor. He eliminates rhythm and melody from his Talking Heads cover, strips the wit from the Magnetic Fields and the levity from Paul Simon, and performs David Bowie’s “Heroes” in a way that ignores its essential dramatic restraint. There are two modes on this album, and sometimes they intersect: Bloated melodrama and/or clinical depression.

Gabriel’s version of Radiohead’s “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” is a great example of just how much he doesn’t get it. The reason why the original is so moving has to do with the way the guitar parts fall together into gorgeous harmony with Thom Yorke’s lead vocal. It sounds like clockwork, specifically like a Doomsday Clock ticking away. It’s a very delicate piece of music. Gabriel’s version is a morose tuneless mess, with every bit of subtlety, melody, and beauty wiped out completely. It seems as though he thinks these songs are just lyrics arbitrarily paired with music, and that if you just recite the words with any old thing, it’s still the song. NO, PETER! THAT’S NOT WHAT MUSIC IS!!!! You don’t need to be totally slavish in replicating a song to produce a good cover version, but you have to on some level recognize the basic elements of what the song is, and carry that over to your interpretation.

The abysmal arrangement would be bad enough, but his vocal performance is truly appalling, especially for such an accomplished vocalist. Did he take a gun shot to a lung while recording this? Was he bleeding out as it recorded? Is this his death rattle? Is this a posthumous release?

Buy it, if you must, from Amazon.