Peter Gabriel
3Arena, Dublin
★★★★★
It started quietly enough, albeit bang on 8pm, when an elderly, slightly rotund figure in a Yeoman of the Guard tunic ambled on to a 3Arena stage bookended with screens left and right and a giant round screen in the centre. At 73, Peter Gabriel’s gait betrays his age. After some self-deprecating remarks about his shape and age and the challenge of time, he was joined around an imaginary campfire by his band for the opening, Washing of the Water. Almost three hours later, a packed, enthralled audience was left staring at a portrait of the South African activist Steve Biko killed in police custody in 1977, the subject of the final song in what was an epic and exhilarating performance.
Gabriel’s music has often been described as art rock and on this tour, the European leg of which ended in Dublin, he has taken this to heart by commissioning leading artists, including Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei, to create work to accompany individual tracks. As such, this was a show for the senses – eyes and ears – one that was as impressive for its quieter turns and its new departures as it was for the anthems that are sprinkled throughout his 50-year-plus career.
Those signature tunes had their place but this was no sentimental journey through his back pages, no stretching the currency of fans’ expectations. The focus of the show is his long-promised, now imminent, new album, i/o, his first album of new material since Up in 2002. In a typically imaginative marketing strategy, he has been releasing singles from the album each month since last January on the date of a full moon, with alternate mixes released on the date of a new moon. Ah rock stars, don’t you just love them?
Whatever about the influence of the heavens, this drip-feed of six tracks, beginning with Panopticom (not the Panopticon of philosopher Michel Foucault fame), makes sense as it helps familiarise fans with the new material which knits perfectly into the show. Songs such as The Court, Four Kinds of Horses and the title track deservedly found instant favour. They are informed by a concern for justice, connection and equality in a world beset by abuse of power and fear of technological overreach.
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Gabriel’s music has always carried a sense of the theatrical and the political; big tunes, big thoughts. Rich, sweeping synth-heavy layers underpinned by dexterous rhythms provide the foundation for his distinctive warm soulful voice. There is a strong gospel feel to his music while remaining very English in tone, though he can also punch home with real intensity as on the classic Sledgehammer which closed the first half of the show. This followed his singling out for praise of Mary Robinson, present in the audience, for her role in the Elders international group. A political rock star no less.
The second half was more predictable in that he pulled out the big hitters such as Red Rain, Big Time, Don’t Give Up (cellist Ayanna Witter-Johnson impressing in Kate Bush’s role) and the closing, Solsbury Hill. Throughout the show his eight-piece band was a joy – tight, expressive and skilful. The much-deserved encore was another classic, In Your Eyes, followed by Biko and Gabriel’s injunction that what happens next re the scourge of racism and other issues “was up to you”. A fitting close.
