“i/o” by Peter Gabriel

A refreshing, often haunting experience from an iconic artist.

Hello! 😊👋

Welcome to a new edition of the Best Music of All Time newsletter!

Today’s music pick is Peter Gabriel’s first record of original material in over 20 years, a refreshing, often haunting experience.

Genre: Art-Rock, Pop

Label: Real World

Release Date: December 1, 2023

Vibe: 😮

To describe the i/o album rollout as “strange” or “enigmatic” would be an understatement.

Peter Gabriel’s latest (and long-gestating) record—his first of original material in over 20 years—dropped after his most recent world tour, during which he played nearly every one of these new songs, much to his fans’ delight. The album also arrives in three new mixes, “Bright-Side,” “Dark-Side,” and “In-Side,” each of which makes subtle adjustments to each of the songs. Various elements, like the guitar work on “Road to Joy,” one of several highlights, are either pulled forward or pushed back in the mix, resulting in a nuanced, if bloated, listen for fans like myself who were curious enough to delve into all three. It’s almost as if Gabriel, notorious for his perfectionism, couldn’t settle on one version of these tracks and put the onus on consumers.

The good news is, regardless of which mix(es) you make time for, this is easily Gabriel’s strongest outing in decades, often drawing on his 80s pop sensibilities more than his avant-garde pop-rock extremism. An excellent example of this would be “Olive Tree,” one of the most joyous, propulsive songs I heard in 2023. The infectious melody and warm brass refrains are so engaging that you can close your eyes and immediately picture yourself cruising with the top down on the Pacific Coast Highway (or your picturesque roadway of choice). It’s so natural and free-flowing that I’d have to assume it took years for him to get it exactly right.

The sparser, reflective moments are frequently outstanding, buoyed by Gabriel’s ability to wrap universal human emotion in pointed lyrics. The expansive “Four Kinds of Horses,” featuring production from Brian Eno, examines how history repeats itself (” You think you’re something different/But you do it all again”). Closer “Live and Let Live” is less of an anti-war treatise and more a call for forgiveness as we collectively make the same mistakes over and over again. It’s a record whose power would’ve been diminished had it been released years ago, I think. There’s a weariness to Gabriel’s voice—a knowing fatigue—that makes his performance never less than enthralling.

In a year that gave us a new (kind of?) Beatles song and (definitely) Stones LP, i/o may be the most vital recent return to form from a legacy rock brand name.

👉 Don’t forget to click the album image to stream the album on your favorite platform 👈