Peter Gabriel: Scratch My Back

The covers album has a bad reputation: it is seen as something that gets released in lieu of something else, evidence that a songwriter's creative juices have dried up. In the case of Peter Gabriel, that's a state of affairs compounded by the fact that he's released only two full-length studio albums in the last 20 years. But Scratch My Back suggests that may have more to do with perfectionism than lack of inspiration. He slows the songs' tempos and sets them to string arrangements that range from filmic and lush to something approaching the icy screech essayed by John Cale on Nico's Marble Index. This emphasises his voice's oft-overlooked soulfulness on a glorious version of Elbow's Mirrorball, and unexpectedly teases out a fatalistic misery from David Bowie's Heroes. Not ­everything responds to the heartfelt treatment – he plays The Magnetic Fields' The Book of Love dead straight, losing the song's deadpan ambiguity – but you'd be hard pushed indeed to posit Scratch My Back as evidence of ­declining creativity.