Peter Gabriel

Accor Arena, Paris ★★★★☆

It’s not so much that this show is long, although the two sets top out at more than two hours. It’s that half of the 20 songs Peter Gabriel performs are new, the contents of his first album of fresh material in 21 years, i/o, which may or may not come out at the end of this year.

It’s a risky business – in 2023, arena gigs by rock stars of Gabriel’s vintage tend to lean on the greatest hits, not stuff no one has heard before. Tonight, he frames the new material in elaborate staging and tees it up with lengthy explanations in halting French to the Paris crowd.

He intersperses them with the Peter Gabriel songs everyone knows. The set is heavy on the singles from 1986’s 6m-selling So, which seem to complement the sound of Gabriel’s synth-heavy new material. A lot of it feels haunted by mortality, not least the beautiful And Still, which reflects on Gabriel’s relationship with his mother, who died in 2016.

Moreover, the new material appears to be going over well with the audience; it feels proof that the gamble of his new tour is paying off. Alexis Petridis

Touring Europe in June and North America in September and October