Peter Gabriel: "Flume"

In an interview with the Quietus, Peter Gabriel describes making his cover of “Flume” by saying, “There were a couple of lines of lyrics that felt awkward at first, but the more time I spent with it the more natural it became.” There’s something so haltingly nice about that; it reminds me of his cameo in a documentary about Alejandro Jodorowsky, sitting in his house, good-natured and somewhat spacey trying to answer silly questions about his outré tastes.

Gabriel’s latest, Scratch My Back, is a lot like that, in general: the feeling of a pedestal’d, wizened artist bringing some originals from less pedestal’d, less wizened newbies to where he’s at—that is, the airless rock star stratosphere—giving the songs a chance at sounding like assured pop standards. “Flume” succeeds better than most perhaps because its awkwardness is so obvious; Justin Vernon’s always had some fairly questionable lyrics, albeit slurred over and generally rendered awesome through alliterative context. So one’s breath is held for “lappy lakes like leery loons” and rewarded with the original in a tux: piano, tasteful horns, and boombox-outside-her-window-worthy vocals. This earnestness is what works so effectively, bridging the gap between dinosaur and hatchling, and in his voice I find warmth and boundless familial feelings. While the album as a whole dubiously justifies its own existence, the fact that a tasteful, professionally recorded version of “Flume” tugs at my emotional center as much as the original might mean that Vernon, if not now then one day, is capable of writing a standard without Uncle Pete’s help.