Peter Gabriel review: Brilliant blend of old and new at 3Arena, Dublin
Peter Gabriel performing recently on the I/O tour, which came to 3Arena, Dublin, on Sunday. (Photo by Christophe DeLattre / AFP)
★★★★☆
Even the lead up is out of the ordinary. A giant clock hangs over the stage counting down towards the 8 o’clock kick-off and every so often an orange jump suited crew member comes out and repaints the hands to indicate where we’re at. He’s but one of many minions and each of them are needed because this is a big show. To the left of the stage, several of them hover over the kind of computer control desk that one might imagine could easily handle a mission to Mars.
When Gabriel appears, on the hour, he’s in a chatty mood, explaining how imagination allows us to escape the tyranny of time and how it’s hard to tell the real from the fake. In order to illustrate this he points out that he’s really an avatar but the opposite of the ABBA ones in London as he’s added 20 pounds, 20 years, and he’s completely bald. He’s really lying on a beach in the Caribbean.
Act I of tonight’s show, which is as much an art installation as a rock'n’roll gig, takes place around a virtual campfire, under a virtual moon. ‘Washing Of The Water’ from his best album, 1992’s Us, and ‘Growing Up’ suit the striped down, campfire approach but once they’re out of the way, Gabriel, his crack band, and his army of technicians unleash a sensual onslaught.
With screens on both sides of the stage, and behind, and a giant circular one overhead, and another one that drops down just after the intermission – yes, an intermission, you don’t get those too often – there is almost too much going on visually to take in. It’s like watching a show in an art gallery from the distant future.
For many of the songs, especially the new ones from his forthcoming I/O album, Gabriel employs the mesmerising work on several visual artists to the extent that you could still enjoy this show in a pair of noise cancelling headphones, although that would be a mistake for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, the band Gabriel has assembled around him are truly expectational. The group is centred around three long time collaborators. Due to some sort of Flann O’Brien Third Policeman molecule exchange arrangement, the circus-strongman moustachioed Tony Levin is now probably more bass guitar than man, and when a bass guitar just doesn’t cut it he employs a twelve-string behemoth called a Chapman Stick. His playing veers from delicately subtle to the sound of a truck crashing into a greenhouse.
Manu Katché is a drummer of such brilliance he could probably play a symphony on the hi-hat alone, something he does just because he can during ‘Red Rain’. Guitarist David Rhodes makes it all look very simple and easy, which it most assuredly isn’t.
This central trio are augmented by several other musicians on various instruments – trumpet, violin, mandolin, what looked like an electric oboe – with special praise going to Ayanna Witter-Johnson on cello and vocals. Gabriel is canny enough to know that his own voice isn’t quite what it used to be so allows her and the other musicians to assist with the heavy lifting. She proves a more than adequate replacement for Kate Bush during a beautiful ‘Don’t Give Up’.
And that’s the other thing. Given the technological flash of a show like this – although there really aren’t any other shows like this – it might have been excusable if the music took a back seat, but this was not the case. Even though six of the 11 songs I counted from I/O have already been released, such a glut of new material could have been a bit of a patience tester for an arena audience but I saw little evidence of that in the transfixed faces around me.
These songs are uniformly strong, especially ‘Panopticon’, ‘Olive Tree’ and the well-named ‘Road To Joy’ with its feint echoes of ‘Kiss That Frog’ and even if some punters were waiting for the hits, at least they had plenty to look at – jellyfish, silver skulls, band members becoming waterfalls, Gabriel action painting à la that old Picasso footage - while they did so.
‘Digging In The Dirt’ was ferocious, coloured by frenzied bebop trumpet crossed with industrial guitar. Solsbury Hill was joyous with the audience providing the “boom, Boom, Boom” backing vocals, ‘Biko’ was stirring, and ‘Big Time’ pounded with more strangled trumpet and the power of Katché’s snare drum.
‘Sledgehammer’ was, perhaps predictably, one of the night’s highlights with the audience on their feet, roaring along. It’s just a great song, although you still have to wonder how exactly a sledge hammer works in a romantic context. It also allowed Gabriel room to showcase his unique approach to choreography.
For other songs he employed the walking and pointing ‘dance’, augmented on occasion by tambourine but during ‘Sledgehammer’, Gabriel, whose tunic and goatee ensemble reminded one of a wise old kung fu monk, stomped about and brought both fists to his head like an angry bookie giving out the odds at the racetrack. He then essayed bit of Shadows two-step action with the aid of Levin and Rhodes.
It was marvellous, as was the rest of this eye-popping and moving show. He even found time to pick Mary Robinson out in the audience and say thanks for the work she’s done. The ovation she received was both heartfelt and deserved.
Gabriel is an exceptional artist, as the majesty of the aforementioned Us album attests, and ever since he first put down what was probably a considerable amount of money for an early Fairlight synthesiser he has used the latest technology to create deep soul music. He did it again in the 3Arena, and that’s no mean feat.
