Peter Gabriel to release 'song swap' album with songs of Arcade Fire, Magnetic Fields + more

Former Genesis front-bloke Peter Gabriel is to release an album entirely of covers, putting forth his own major reworks and interpretations of some of the best known songs of all time, and some other, small, insignificant, obscure songs by some indie bands, reports BBC 6Music news.

Though, from the information we have gleaned, it's not entirely clear just which artists Peter will be covering, and who else is directly involved in the project. This makes it more exciting, right? It's his first record for SEVEN years, too!

Composer John Metcalfe, who worked on the record, described the record, entitled Scratch My Back as "a song swap", where famous artists cover other famous artists' songs. Metcalfe said that the record was already being mixed, but was fairly coy on who is actually ON the record.

"I'm not allowed to say who, just yet, but there are some very, very famous singers and bands involved. There are some bands that are very, very well known from the last 10 years, and one or two more recent bands and singers."

We think (read: saw on NME.com) the tracklisting for the album is as follows. Possibly.

1. 'Heroes' by David Bowie
2. 'Street Spirit (Fade Out)' by Radiohead
3. 'The Book Of Love' by Magnetic Fields
4. 'Flume' by Bon Iver
5. 'My Body Is A Cage' by Arcade Fire
6. 'Listening Wind' by Talking Heads
7. 'I Think It's Going to Rain Today' by Randy Newman
8. 'Après Moi'
9. 'Waterloo Sunset' by The Kinks
10. 'The Boy In The Bubble' by Paul Simon
11. 'The Power Of The Heart' by Lou Reed
12. 'Philadelphia' by Neil Young
13. 'Mirrorball' by Elbow

No Vampire Weekend, though, as he's already covered them.

Which is certainly intriguing, given Metcalfe's comments. Could we see The Magnetic Fields covering Randy Newman? Randy Newman covering Elbow? Radiohead covering Paul Simon? It's anybody's guess. Of course, Metcalfe could be acting vague to drum up interest in the big G.

Metcalfe also said that the album is acoustic, with no guitars or drums, just "Peter with an orchestra" which is sometimes "quite large".

That's about all we know. No real word on how it's going to be released, but it'll be in Spring 2010. It had been suggested that there will be individual releases of the covered tracks, and tracks covered by Gabriel and other artists, one at a time.