Peter Gabriel i/o (2023)

From pitchfork.com

After two decades of tinkering, the art-rocker’s first album since 2002 arrives in an array of different mixes. Yet the songs are refreshingly uncomplicated, reconnecting with Gabriel’s pop instincts.

If you are someone who struggles with perfectionist tendencies, then you can maybe understand how Peter Gabriel is feeling right now. He has been working on an album called i/o for more than 20 years—and teasing it in the press for even longer—and, as of today, it is finally available to hear in full. But before we listen, we must decide which version of the 12-song album we want to play: the “Bright-Side” or the “Dark-Side” mix, each containing the same tracks in the same order, but featuring small adjustments. And if you check out both and enjoy them well enough, but decide that neither is quite right, then you can opt for the “In-Side” mix, available separately and on the three-disc deluxe edition.

It’s a funny way to place listeners in the shoes of the artist, asking you to consider the tiny tweaks that build a song’s atmosphere and identity. Listening to i/o, you might find yourself asking: Is the trumpet in “Live and Let Live” a crucial component to its climax or a subtle texture in the background? Do the guitars in “Road to Joy” need to blast from the mix or ride alongside the bass groove? You may become frustrated. And Gabriel is right there with you. There he is on the cover—“one of life’s ummer and ahhers,” as his Genesis bandmate Phil Collins once put it—with his head in his hands, fading into a grim, colorless mass.

To even reach this point, the 73-year-old artist had to take some baby steps. First was releasing a new song on each full moon of 2023: a recurring, self-imposed deadline that drip-fed the album steadily to his ever-patient audience. He also booked himself a world tour, where he performed nearly every song from the as-yet-unreleased record each night. Delivered between long monologues about the state of the modern world and the potential benefits of artificial intelligence—and, of course, in between the select hits from his back catalog—Gabriel asked fans to confront this work-in-progress material as a living, breathing art project before encountering it a long-awaited entry in his discography.

Beyond the fact that it actually exists, one of the big surprises of i/o is how uncomplicated it is. His last batch of original songs, 2002’s Up, was dense and depressive, and his orchestral diversions—2010’s covers album Scratch My Back and 2011’s reimagining-the-classics set New Blood—transformed their source material into the kinds of melodramatic slow-burns you hear in trailers for big-budget action films. But i/o reconnects with Gabriel’s pop instincts. For the first time in a long time, he is singing big choruses, writing in simple verse about human nature, and trying to uplift. From the sparse balladry of “So Much” to the horn-accompanied bounce of “Olive Tree,” the music reflects little of its arduous recording process. It sounds natural, intuitive.

Back in 2002, Gabriel introduced the themes of the record as “birth and death and a little bit of in and out activity in between,” which is kind of like saying, “For dinner I’d like something available and edible and tasty.” But he does have a knack for articulating universal experiences in novel ways. “So Much” portrays the scope of our life’s work with two warring sentiments—“So much to aim for” and “Only so much can be done”—while the funky “Road to Joy” offers insight into a raging existential battle: “Just when you think it can’t get worse/The mind reveals the universe.” Other songs tell their story through the arrangements themselves, like the starry, Eno-assisted “Four Kind of Horses” and the steady march of “This Is Home.” With nuanced performances from trusted accompanists like bassist Tony Levin and drummer Manu Katché, you can understand why Gabriel treated these recordings with so much care and attention.

Of course, the long wait and intricate presentation open Gabriel up to some criticism. A lot of the weaknesses come down to the lyrics. When reaching the chorus of the anthemic title track of an album he’s been tinkering away at for so long, could he really not think of a more elegant refrain than “Stuff coming out/Stuff going in”? And in “Live and Let Live,” an empathetic protest song that’s less about world peace than forgiving ourselves, does he really need to invoke an old chestnut about what happens when the whole world takes an eye for an eye? Usually critics hear these types of lyrics and suggest the solution is to spend a little more time in the oven. i/o offers a strong counterargument.

With so much context to consider, it can be easy to take for granted a quality as simple as Gabriel’s voice, which sounds brilliant and remains his defining strength as an artist. What other singer could be equally authoritative delivering one of prog rock’s most notoriously complex concept albums, a couple of the sweetest love songs in rom-com history, the wordless vocal incantations in a Scorsese Bible epic, and angsty Y2K industrial music warranting a Trent Reznor remix? And while many artists Gabriel’s age wind up pivoting to new genres or coating their voice in unearthly effects to accommodate their loss of range, his singing is the most unaffected element of these new songs: bold and melodic, equally clear and prominent in each edition. (For what it’s worth, I prefer the “Dark-Side” mix, which seems more suited to the cohesive full-album experience versus the “Bright-Side,” which caters more to each individual song.)

As history leaves the long rollout in the dust, I imagine his singing will be the quality that distinguishes i/o: a reminder that, for all the endless stress, our simple emotional connections are what perseveres. And, what do you know, this is precisely the subject of the best song on the record, which is called “Playing for Time.” A piano ballad inspired by Randy Newman, it squarely addresses the aging process, how our race against the clock gives us both an increased sense of urgency and a stronger appreciation of the present. Gabriel sings from a zoomed-out perspective about our time on Earth (“There’s a planet spinning slowly/We call it ours”) and the shifting relationships among family members (“The young move to the center/The mom and dad, the frame”). The arrangement is beautiful and precise and a little heavy-handed after the drums come in, but it’s easy to forgive once you lock into the earnest beauty of the words, the tender pull of his delivery. “Any moment that we bring to life—ridiculous, sublime,” he sings, first bellowing then softening his delivery, as if to only remind himself.