Gabriel Murders Mirrorball?

My opinion on it.

I just heared it the first time. I think it sounds like a Broadway musical. Not in a bad way. Imagine an actor singing this during a play. It would totally fit.
And I also like the orchestration. Really big big sound. On Peters voice, well, of course it'd changed in the last years but on the other hand, he would have been capable of singing it like Guy does.
But he hasn't done just a simple cover. He ripped the song a part and stuck it together the way he likes it.
Fine with me.

All in all, I probably wouldn't buy the CD but he didn't kill Mirrorball.

Some bastard has stolen my Scratch My Back CD All I've got left is the case and sleeve. Not happy at all. It's gonna cost me £8 or £9 to replace and all I need is the disc. Perhaps some kind forum user would burn me a CD? I wouldn't normally do this sort of thing, but there's loads of music that I want to buy at the moment and the budget will only stretch so far. Buying CD's that I've already purchased isn't high on my list of priorities. A friend purchesed it through i-tunes and will burn me a CD but it's only MP3 quality and a copy of the original CD would sound so much better.

PM if anyone can help.

Cheers.

I pm'd you...


Ok...could anyone edit the title of that post? THAT WOS NO MOIDER!!
I just listened to "Scratch my back" and I think it is wonderful!
No bombastic orchestra-meets-rocker stuff. No wannabe Carmina Burana-Choir, just modern classic or maybe singer/songwriter with bigger orchestration...
I got goosebumps on "Mirrorball", Elbow's version sounds like "ahh, at last in love" Peter's version sounds like: umm...I'm in love...I am REALLY in love...GODHEAVENS I AM IN LOVE!!!!
and as I said before. Elbow turned his uptempo "More than this" into a Ballad. He turns their ballad into an uptempo track...
If you hate classical music it might be not your cup of tea. But if you even like that Abbey Road Thing you should give it a fair listen, it is way much more progressive. (and I am not one of those who thinks that hysterical synthi solos are "progressive" )

@ Allyngibson. I like your interpretation of it - the destination vs the journey. One thing I like so much about Peter Gabriel's singing ids the vulnerability and he brings loads to this. Not that Guy doesn't (it's one of the things I love about his singing, too), just... different.

TL, I agree with what you're saying. I must confess at first when I read Peter Gabriuel's statement about "no guitars or drums" I thought it might be a bit of an affectation, but no. When you hear it, it makes perfect sense - it gives greater freedom to produce true reinterpretations/arrangements not an orchestra swelling the band sound - which has its place but I quite agree with what you say about "progressive". Wonderful.

The last few posts from allyn, Elbowfreak, Glendarian and TL all resonate, and have enjoyed following all your thoughts on 'Scratch my back'.
I always thought doing it without drum or guitar was a brilliant way to experiment, but initially because the track preceding 'Mirrorball' and the track after, do have piano, it just made the lack of, in this version more pronounced to me. Yet the quivering, fragmented arrangement that has replaced it, is most haunting and is closest you could possibly get to replicating in sound, a slowly spinning glass mirrorball refracting the light.

I have never thought hysterical synthi solos are 'progressive' either...bit of subtle mellotron type ok though!
...and there is the danger of overdoing the strings, so it all becomes syrup, when an orchestra is swelling the band sound (with the Halle/Elbow collaboration I felt that occurred at times, and a few more solo interventions from altervative orchestral instruments, and more experimental, like including music like 'Presuming Ed' would have spiced it up!)
Anyway, overall the arrangements and the songs chosen for 'Scratch my Back' are a rich and diverse collection with PG vocal unifying them.
I tend to play Heroes, Boy in the Bubble, Listening wind and My Body is a cage the most, and skip the Radiohead(whom I love) cover I'm afraid. Still strain to hear this Mirrorball arrrangement minus vocals, as the orchestral refrains only, replay in my head, even though I like Peter Gabriel.

Listened to Scratch my back with my mom and she likes it too. Btw, she likes "Street Spirit" most! And I like it too more and more though it feels a bit like looking down a gorge of sadness, I was slightly confused after listening but maybe I like it just because of this because who has 10 audio cassettes with songs to cry to...

OK, I re-listened to the Gabriel version of Mirrorball, several times, and I kept in mind all the comments posted here by all y'all that enjoyed it. I was very intrigued by the takes that different people have had on this thing. I figured I might be listening to it with a bad attitude or something, and that I should give it another chance.

But I still don't think it's up to much. *shrug* I find that the Scratch My Back project, as a whole, is patchy and this particular tune is (to me) one of the less successful patches on it. I've started warming to his interpretation of Flume a bit, and I can see the way he really does respect the songs he's chosen. I just...cannot...seem to get enthused about listening to it, for whatever reason. But I really do look forward to hearing the results when the artists he's covered do their versions of his songs. That should be very interesting!

I really like it.

I've had the album since the day it was released and as soon as I got it home I listened to "Mirrorball" and didn't think much of it. Since then I listened to the whole album and ignored the fact that it was a covers album, and really enjoyed it. Of course if you listen to each track and compare them to the originals they're all very different indeed as he's completely rearranged them and removed all percussion, so several of the tracks sound glacially slow (e.g. "The Boy In The Bubble") or sound very peculiar when stripped of their bombastic drums (e.g. "My Body Is A Cage"). When I listened to it after telling myself to ignore that the songs were covers, instead listening to them as new songs, I loved it. Well, almost all of it, as I hated "Street Spirit" due to the cracking in his voice.

I'm off to see him perform the whole album at the O2 this weekend. Can't wait. The first half of the show is this album in its entirety, and the second is reinterpretations of some of his own stuff. Early reviews of the first show have been superb.

I must admid, after knowing some of the originals now I like Gabriel's versions even more.
Magnetic Fields sounds too bored, so that you would not really believe him that he likes it when his girl "read" to him from the book and the cover of "Not one of us" is a quite strange 80ies style thing
Arcade Fire's is quite nice but still I can't help thinking that it is not a very solid cage, with Gabriel it sounds like he's not sure if he can reach for the key, though he knows where it is...Still I would be curious what Arcade Fire would cover IF they cover something at all...
I don't like Lou Reed's original. Reminds me in a bad way of ol' Johnny Cash, I'm afraid Solsbury Hill will at Mr. Cash grumping himself through "Personal Jesus" (sorry for the sarkasm, I might be one of the few people who do not like the newer stuff of J.C. )
Radiohead sounds a bit too harmless like a rockballad for that dark depressive lyric but for they are not that typical rock today I could imagine they would be good with a cover. (C'mon Thom! Have a try with "Wallflower")
But Elbow is still the most beautiful original and I am really curious how they do "Mercy Street"

Btw, that cracking of Gabriel's voice in "Street Spirit" takes some getting used to it, I admit. But knowing him as being a perfectionist he must have had a thought behind that or he would have mixed it out...isn't he infamous for remixing live records in the studio?!

Yeah, he partially "retouched" his live records. Scratch My Back is a bit different, he tried to not do too many takes, and I think he even went for doing just one take in some cases, but I'm not sure about that. Anyway, it's not his usual perfectionism (he also went with a "non-perfect" vocal take with the song The Drop, by the way). About Street Spirit... I really like the cover version, and I also like the original. It's just two different things really, and Gabriel has found a way to play the character that Radiohead create; someone who's so deep into depression that he's actually broken. The voice breaks, lingers, retreats into simple talking, because this character is through with everything - until the end, when there's this undefined hope of a way out through "love" in an undefined promise.

At least that's my way of seeing it.

And just to lose all my credibility as an objective observer , I saw yesterday's concert in Paris. There's something really, really nice for an Elbow fan to hear the words of Mirrorball being sung in that context. And the rest of the concert was great, too.

According to reports on the Peter Gabriel forum, Elbow was at the O2 Arena for the Gabriel concert last night.

After all the debate on here, I've only just got my mitts on "Scratch My Back" and was very pleasantly surprised with what he's done with Mirrorball. It brought to mind the Halle version - for obvious orchestral reasons - while PG seemed to be doing his best to deliver a vocal as distinct from Guy's as possible. No easy task bearing in mind the comparisons between the two are still doing the rounds.

I lost touch with Gabriel's stuff after 1989, but this new project has stoked my interest enough to unearth more from the last 20 years.

gabriel's vocal interpretation of the song sounds nice. i really like gabriel's voice.
but i wish he would have reduced this over-enthusiastic orchestral arrangement a little. sounds like a movie soundtrack. or a musical, as somebody stated earlier.

does anybody know when the "...i'll scratch yours" version of mercy street will be released?

perfect choice, by the way... elbow doing mercy street!
could have been my idea!

In case anyone here's interested, Bon Iver has released his cover of Peter Gabriel's tune Come Talk To Me. You can find it streaming on this site if you want to give it a listen:
http://hypem.com/track/1076284/Bon+Iver+-+Come+Talk+To+Me+Peter+Gabriel+cover+

Beautiful cover!

the best cover so far.

cant wait for "mercy street" in the elbow version!!

Now THAT is just wonderful - I absolutely love it!!!

Mercy Street just went online, and it's absolutely beautiful. Surprise. But I really like how they approached it, especially that little rhythm going on in the background. Makes it sound more experimental/"weird" than the U2 cover, for example.

The usual petergabriel.com video with PG and Guy talking about their respective songs should come up any minute, I guess.

The Mercy Street cover is seriously beautiful. I don't think Elbow has ever disappointed me with a cover song, the only possible exception would be their cover of "Back to Black". Wasn't a fan of it, but I haven't revisited in a long time. It's great to hear a more recent recording after having nothing new for the past six months or so.

(Please could one of the mods change the title of this thread?! it never fails to wind me up )

Yes Elbow's Mercy Street is a wonderful version of a gorgeous song, beautiful; I do love their touch with any cover, and as you say, so good to hear something new from them in the gap before the next album.

I've been loving the whole project too so far, of the others I particularly enjoyed Lou Reed turning Solsbury Hill into a Velvet Underground song. :-)

Nice to hear something else from them. It is nicely covered and i do like it.
- depsite my usual reservations about covers.

Glendarian wrote:

(Please could one of the mods change the title of this thread?! it never fails to wind me up )

If Cestrian Saint agrees to a change, I will change it to: 'Gabriel Covers Mirrorball'

MagicalTrevor wrote:

Glendarian wrote:

(Please could one of the mods change the title of this thread?! it never fails to wind me up )

If Cestrian Saint agrees to a change, I will change it to: 'Gabriel Covers Mirrorball'

No, it suits perfectly the way it is !!!

I agree with Glendarian that it should be changed.
Not everybody agrees with the statement it makes.
The title of this thread should be unbiased and just refer to the fact that PG did a cover of Mirrorball.
Whatever your personal opinion of it can then be discussed within the thread, or we could even do a poll-thingy regarding its merits.
Anyway, that's my tuppence worth...

Personally, I agree.

However with my Mod hat on, I wouldn't want to change the thread title without the thread creators consent.

If the thread title had been considered unpopular from the beginning, then a new thread would have begun.

That aside, Cestrian Saint has not visited the board since March, so I am weakening on this point.

As ever, it's up to thread subscribers, give me enough 'yays' to change it and I will.