Three years ago, singer Peter Gabriel released the covers album “Scratch My Back,” in which he offered his takes on tunes by such noted artists as Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, Radiohead, Neil Young, David Byrne, among others.
Now it’s payback time.
According to Gabriel’s website, the follow-up album, appropriately titled “And I’ll Scratch Yours,” will be released this fall and will feature a number of the same artists covering his songs.
Arcade Fire, Lou Reed, David Byrne, Bon Iver, Brian Eno, and Elbow are among the returning artists.
Randy Newman, Regina Spektor, Paul Simon and The Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt are also participating.
While it’s unfortunate that Radiohead and Young were unable to contribute songs, Joseph Arthur and Feist will serve as decent substitutes.
Among the highlights of the album’s track listing are Eno tackling “Mother of Violence,” Reed redoing “Solsbury Hill,” Arcade Fire playing “Games Without Frontiers,” and Feist taking on “Shock the Monkey.”
Gabriel explained the project thusly: “Rather than make a traditional covers record, I thought it would be much more fun to create a new type of project in which artists communicated with each other and swapped a song for a song, i.e. you do one of mine and I’ll do one of yours, hence the title.”
“And I’ll Scratch Yours” will be released September 23.