Conceptually intriguing and soundly curated, the S.S. Scratch My Back was supposed to be a thing of beauty, but sadly, the ship went under this Tuesday, February 16 almost as soon as it left port.
None of the lives of the 12 original songs aboard the vessel were spared as they were caught in a storm of poor and cliched arrangements that left the songs slow, melodramatic, and worst of all, tediously drawn out.
Reports state that it was as if Peter Gabriel, the shipwright, had paid little to no attention to what made the original songs so likable in the first place. He stripped the songs of their hooks and their intended lyrical meanings, turning them into insipid, leaden versions of themselves.
Of the ship’s passengers, David Bowie’s “Heroes,” which was to turn 33 this year, was the first to go under. Sapped of all it’s original triumph and energy, the song stood no chance of survival as it was bogged down by a lengthy intro that burst into a sappy whirl of synthesized strings.
More devastating, however, was the loss of so many young aboard the ship. Bon Iver’s 3 year-old “Flume” was forced under by Gabriel’s refusal to keep the song’s folky rhythmic sway, while the Arcade Fire’s “My Body is a Cage,” also 3, had it’s original organ tension replaced by lazy, conventional strings. It was a horrific six minutes before the song finally drowned, under a noisy chorus that elicited none of the awed reaction the original provoked.
Gabriel’s shoddy workmanship showed especially when he seemingly missed the entire feeling surrounding some of the passenger songs. The irony of the Magnetic Fields’ cynical and amusing story about “The Book of Love” went overlooked by the ignorant Gabriel, who sung the lyric “the book of love is long and boring” in a weepy, dramatically romantic whisper.
Investigation following the tragedy showed that rather than picking the songs that suited his vessel best and imbuing them with some sort of meaning and musical complexity, he configured a trendy, calculated set of songs that would make his vessel look stylish and in touch with modern shipbuilding.
Instead, his laziness and overwhelming sense of self-importance in the execution of the task were made obvious by the S.S. Scratch My Back’s complete inability to float when immersed in water.
