Peter Gabriel’s long-awaited “I/O” still doesn’t have an official release date, but the ex-Genesis leader has spent much of 2023 releasing new material to mark full moons. He began with “Panopticom” in early January, which he’s chased with monthly entries like the Brian Eno collaborations “Four Kinds of Horses” and “Road to Joy.” Whenever it arrives, “I/O” will be the first all-new studio LP from Gabriel since 2010’s “Scratch My Back”.
Peter Gabriel has shared “So Much” , another stunning track from his upcoming studio album, “i/o”. It’s the seventh song released, which he’s been doing once each month in 2023 upon a full moon.
He’s supporting the album with an extensive tour that began in Europe on May 18th. (The tour resumes with a North American edition beginning on September. 8th.)
The first track, “Panopticom,” was released at midnight on January 6,th nearly two months after he announced plans for the tour last until November. “i/o The Tour” sees Gabriel playing new material from the forthcoming album, as well as delving into his extensive catalogue of music, with hits, fan favorites and “the unexpected.”
Written and produced by Gabriel, “So Much” features a string arrangement from John Metcalfe and contributions from Tony Levin on bass, David Rhodes on guitar and backing vocals from Peter’s daughter Melanie Gabriel.
“I was trying purposefully not to be clever with this,” says Gabriel. “I wanted to get a very simple chorus but one which still had some substance to the harmony and melody. Something that was easy to digest but still had a bit of character to it.
“‘So Much’ is about mortality, getting old, all the bright, cheerful subjects, but I think when you get to my sort of age, you either run away from mortality or you jump into it and try and live life to the full and that always seems to make a lot more sense to me. The countries that seem most alive are those that have death as part of their culture.”
The previous track, “Road to Joy,” features the Soweto Gospel Choir, a string arrangement from John Metcalfe and contributions from a number of Gabriel’s current touring band. The song is one of the last tracks to emerge for the “i/o” record, but it has some DNA from an earlier project. “It was actually very late in the record that we got to this,” says Gabriel. There had been a song that musically I’d started, I think, around the OVO project called Pukka. It was very different to this, but it was actually the starting point for coming back to this song. I just felt there was a good groove there, and I wanted something else with rhythm and so we tried a few things when I was working with Brian Eno. The excitement and energy in the song was something that I was getting off on. I felt we didn’t have enough of that for this record.”
The fifth track released, “Four Kinds of Horses,” “actually began on Richard Russell’s project ‘Everything Is Recorded,’ said Gabriel in a May post. “He’s a friend (and founder of XL Records) and he asked me to pop in to his studio. I came up with some chords, melodies and words on top of a groove he was working on. We tried a few things that didn’t altogether work and so it laid dormant for quite a while. Then I started playing around with it again and changed the mood and the groove and something else began to emerge with a better chorus.
When he released the title track on April 6th, he noted, “This month the song is ‘i/o’ and ‘i/o’ means input/output. You see it on the back of a lot of electrical equipment and it just triggered some ideas about the stuff we put in and pull out of ourselves, in physical and non-physical ways,” says Gabriel. The song features Soweto Gospel Choir, who were recorded at High Seas Studios in South Africa.
Of the album, he says, “It’s been around for a long time as a title for this project. I always knew I was going to write a song called “i/o”,
“‘Playing For Time,’” says Gabriel of the stunning third track, “is a song that I have been working on for a long time and have performed live, without lyrics, so some people may be familiar with it. It’s been an important song for me. It’s about time, mortality and memories and the idea that each of us has a planet full of memories which get stashed inside the brain.
“It is more of a personal song about how you assemble memories and whether we are prisoners of time or whether that is something that can actually free us. I do think it’s good to push yourself towards more bold or interesting experiences because then you will have richer memories to feed you when you get to my age. You also get taught by every meaningful experience that you go through.
Of “The Court,” Gabriel says, he was inspired by the work of Namati, whose mission is to provide people around the world access to justice they may not otherwise be able to afford. “I had this idea for ‘the court will rise’ chorus, so it became a free-form, impressionistic lyric that connected to justice, but there’s a sense of urgency there. A lot of life is a struggle between order and chaos and in some senses the justice or legal system is something that we impose to try and bring some element of order to the chaos. That’s often abused, it’s often unfair and discriminatory but at the same time it’s probably an essential part of a civilized society.” Listen to the song as well as an extended feature on the track. “I’m an old drummer; I still love to find a groove,” he says.
The European dates marked his first shows outside of North America since 2014’s tour celebrating the era-defining album “So”. “It’s been a while and I am now surrounded by a whole lot of new songs and am excited to be taking them out on the road for a spin. Look forward to seeing you out there,” said Gabriel in the original November tour announcement.
Produced by Live Nation, the 22 shows in Europe kicked off on May 18th before wrapping on June 25th. The touring band includes Gabriel veterans Tony Levin (bass), Richard Evans (guitar, flute), Manu Katché (drums), and David Rhodes (guitar), plus newcomers Ayanna Witter-Johnson (cello, piano, vocals), Marina Moore (violin, viola, vocals), Don McLean (keyboards), and Josh Shpak (trumpet, french horn, keys, vocals).
In December, Gabriel previewed the first release, “Panopticom,” and the tour for members of his fan club.
“Panopticom” references an idea that Gabriel has been working on to initiate the creation of an infinitely expandable accessible data globe. The aim is to “allow the world to see itself better and understand more of what’s really going on.”
“I’m lucky to have two of the world’s best mix engineers, Tchad Blake and Mark ‘Spike’ Stent, working with me on the music from “i/o,” Gabriel wrote . “Rather than choosing only one of their mixes to release I have decided that people should be able to hear all the great work that they are both doing.”
Peter Gabriel turned 73 on February 13th.
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