Protean British musician Peter Gabriel has launched a song-swap with his first album of cover tunes, Scratch My Back. (Mike Segar/Reuters) For more than two decades, Peter Gabriel has stuck to a schedule more suited to a novelist than a pop star.

Ever since So, his game-changing masterwork from 1986, Gabriel has ignored the music business's typical rush to release. His new disc, Scratch My Back, is his first full-length album in eight years, and just his fifth since the mid-'80s. His in-between singles — like those for the movies, Lovetown (Philadelphia) and Down to Earth (Wall-E) — always arrive like little gifts, while the CDs have become a fail safe for those who believe that albums matter.

It's one of the reasons why a new Peter Gabriel disc feels like an event. Scratch My Back is his first set of covers, accompanied by a series of haunting orchestral scores. The artists he covers are performers he's long admired (Talking Heads, Neil Young) as well as ones he's recently discovered (Radiohead, Arcade Fire). There isn't a single original. There isn't guitar, or drums. And there isn't the ennui that often mars a cover album. Scratch My Back, as the title suggests, is predicated on a premise: you do my songs, and I'll do yours. (The set of Gabriel covers is forthcoming.) John Metcalfe's arrangements are also part of the challenge — deploying, as they do, just voice, orchestra and piano.

Scratch My Back is a reminder of how much Gabriel's work has broadened our expectations of what popular music could be.

It is a grand, late-career experiment. And it gets you thinking: is there a pattern to this Englishman's remarkable, four-decade long run? Scratch My Back is serious, searching, contemplative art. It is rigorous and fixed on detail. It is also a reminder of how much Gabriel's work has broadened our expectations of what popular music could be.

Go right back to the beginning, to Gabriel's stint with Genesis (1967–75). The group produced its own art-rock hybrid, which featured fantastic imagery, grand themes, experimental suites and fascination with costumes and sets. Early Genesis is still an acquired taste, but it was a group where concepts counted, and progressive music proved to have a wider audience.

Gabriel continued experimenting on his first four solo albums (1977–82) — all self-titled, all marked by unmistakable cover art and a widening aesthetic (multilayered electronics, world music, Jungian lyrics). While he enjoyed a degree of commercial success with singles like Solsbury Hill, Games Without Frontiers and Shock the Monkey, critics and other musicians lauded the purity of his work.

(Realworld/Universal) And then came So. With Canadian-born producer Daniel Lanois at his side, Gabriel helped define the era's sound. His deepening interest in electronics was woven into exquisite writing; lyrics swayed from sharp, social critique to searing self-therapy. The album's two huge hits, Sledgehammer and Big Time, were parodies of superstardom, probing Gabriel's ambivalence towards fame ("Big time/My belly is getting bigger/Big time/And my bank account"). With Tony Levin's infectious bass lines, the terrific stop-start guitar riffs and Gabriel's meticulously processed voice, these tunes were wicked dance-floor creations, and they rewired arena soundtracks and beer commercials for years to come.

So and its follow-up, Us (1992), cemented Gabriel's status as an international superstar, but success spurred Gabriel's musical curiosity. He dove into work with international musicians (much like Paul Simon), making World music a central part of the popular landscape. Increasingly impressive in hindsight was his work with South Asian musicians (especially Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan) on the soundtrack to Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ.

If Gabriel stretched Western notions of genre, he also pushed live performance into new and provocative terrain. His abiding interest in spectacle entered a new phase. His music videos had long been provocative, and in 1993, he turned the choreography of his huge world tour over to Quebec theatre artist Robert Lepage.

Inevitably, Gabriel's influence has been as far-flung as his own interests. If Vampire Weekend's recent Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa made him a symbol of arch Afro pop ("This feels so unnatural/Peter Gabriel, too"), a reggae album from Gabriel alum Sinead O'Connor (Throw Down Your Arms) proved the power of these cross-cultural leaps. Jazz musicians have found much to admire in Gabriel's writing — instrumentalists as disparate as keyboardist Herbie Hancock and guitarist Al Di Meola have covered Mercy Street, the sweeping hymn from So, while singer Kate McGarry turned it into a folk-rock crawl.

Canadian art-rockers Arcade Fire are among the artists covered on Gabriel's album. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press)Throughout Gabriel's career, he's always strived towards something serious, something substantial. That sentiment holds for Scratch My Back. Sure, the album is a tip of the hat to a younger generation of songwriters, many of whom were recommended to Gabriel by his daughter, Melanie. Bon Iver's Flume, for example, feels like it was always meant for Gabriel's voice. But look at the older-generation choices: David Bowie (Heroes), Paul Simon (The Boy in the Bubble), Randy Newman (I Think It's Going to Rain Today), Lou Reed (The Power of the Heart), Neil Young (Philadelphia) and David Byrne and Brian Eno (Listening Wind). These artists may be markedly different, but each, in his own way, has echoed Gabriel's accomplishments, making popular music a natural vehicle for serious, mainstream art.

On Scratch My Back, Gabriel turns these songs into formal studies. Metcalfe sets the pieces into a careful, slow motion; prefaces and codas barely exist. Gabriel brings the melodies into plain view, soaring above the horns and strings. Hoarse, wise and immediately recognizable, his voice is one of modern music's truly magnificent and irreplaceable things. And as the layers change, the emotional geography remains pure Gabriel — a luminous melancholy.

Scratch My Back isn't groundbreaking, although to expect that might be missing the point. It can be tender and sombre and inspiring; in spots it can tread water. But the disc remains a powerful symbol of a generation still inspired by the possibilities tucked away in even the simplest popular songs.

Scratch My Back is in stores now. Peter Gabriel performs on April 28 and 29 at the Bell Centre in Montreal.

Greg Buium is a writer based in Vancouver.