He arrives alone. Raise his cap. “It’s a great pleasure to be back in Montreal,” he emphasizes. And Peter Gabriel also explains that in these days when we distinguish less and less between reality and falsehood, it may very well be that it is his avatar that we are dealing with this Wednesday evening at the Bell Centre. “My avatar weighs twenty kilos and he is bald,” he explains. The real Peter is said to be lounging on the shores of the Mediterranean, and he has the physique “of a Greek God”. Conclusion ? “Have fun…” Understood.
He sits at the piano, sings Washing Up The Water in an extraordinarily intact voice, the same since the Genesis years. He does not wait to present his musicians, with care, admiration… and tenderness. “ Maybe it’s time for a little growing up », wishes our man. At times, in the verses, the melodies nestled in arrangements of strings and keyboards irresistibly recall airs of Foxtrot And Tress pass. Panopticonthe first of the songs from the planetary project i/ois both immense and perfectly defined.
Almost neo-prog
Here again, we are not far from Genesis. If the circular screen is very Pink Floyd, the music has this scale and these modulations which are allegiance… neo-prog? Four Kinds Of Horses is more baroque, imbued with sadness and carried by the beauty of the whole. Gabriel’s voice is prayer and cry, a call to living forces. A trumpet solo captures the heart.
Between plays, he reads demanding texts. The attention of the thousands of spectators could not be sharper: we are ready to better hear the connections that i/o weaves. A success from the other century follows: Digging In The Dirt. Nice balance, logical passage after this bouquet of new products. Oddly enough, this takes us away from the territory where Peter the eternal Pied Piper took us. In the time of Genesis, he would have continued his momentum, Music Box in Watcher Of The Skies. The modern age is not patient, he knows it.
Dance, dance
Playing For Time is a bit of a piano bar, a sort of break. We think Billy Joel, Elton John. Another world, as if Gabriel had entered somewhere to pass the time. And cry his blues. Time to pull ourselves together, and restart the inexorable clock. Tony Levin and Manu Katche support him like brothers. Olive Tree, another new feature, fast forward, danceable pop to give you some energy. The piece is not exciting: that is not its function. Who is dancing? This may not be our desire.
We find ourselves wondering what would happen if Gabriel included Dancing With The Moonlit Knight at this precise moment, or The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway ? The collective emotion that this crowd would experience! Mazette! We therefore wonder why he doesn’t do it, almost never. Although he resolutely looks straight ahead and encourages us to change the world, a more than honorable mission for a creator of this stature, this part of the past is missing.
But hey, he sticks steadfastly to his solo career. This past exists for him in the present: it will serve Sledgehammer at the end of the first part, good to sing and get up and struggle. The crowd exults. It is already a lot.
Hymn time
But still ? It’s off to a strong start with Darknessa great relentless ballad, which features a multiplicity of Peter Gabriel, through a magic of mirrors which is reminiscent of the famous scene of Rita Hayworth in The Lady Of Shanghai by Orson Welles. Love Can Heal is equally touching, a new hymn which is added to the corpus. Road To Joyin the genre, is as instantly winning as it is less solemn.
In fact, the second part is mainly that of the great hymns, slow and meaningful beauties: Don’t Give Up, Red Rain, Biko. Each is an event in itself, giving a measure of the importance and relevance of great songs in the evolution of society.
The faithful of fifty years ago almost forget the Cinema Show in their heads. After all, they have the records, the films. Impossible to blame this great artist for focusing on the rest of the world. Solsbury Hillin the final, will have been the consolation prize, THE revived memory of the legendary 1970s, played at least once by Genesis during the reunion alone, in 1982. But yes, it counts.