The song is the latest in full moon releases
Peter Gabriel has released “Love Can Heal,” the ninth track from his album i/o. The song, Brite-Side Mix by Mark “Spike” Stent, follows Gabriel’s string of releases during a full moon.
Written and produced by Gabriel, the song is “a dreamy, experiential piece with some abstract imagery,” Gabriel shares. Adding, that it’s “a carpet of sound, a tapestry where things are woven together, but not necessarily supposed to stick out, but just form part of a whole.”
“Love Can Heal” is a song that was performed during the recent i/o tour, but actually had its live premiere during Peter Gabriel and Sting’s Rock, Paper, Scissors Tour of the North America in 2016.
“‘Love Can Heal’ was written around 2016 and I started playing it midway through the tour and dedicated it to Jo Cox, who was the British MP brutally murdered by an extremist and someone that I had met at a leadership conference,” Gabriel states. “I think the song fits right into the themes of the album in the sense that i/o is about feeling and being connected to everything and in a way, the next evolution of being connected to things is a feeling of love for everything.”
Though not directly related to the song, there is this peripheral connection and inspiration that comes from Gabriel’s interest in the parallels between how people, over many centuries, have used psychedelic drugs for mystical experiences and the current clinical research of many Universities into their healing powers.
“Love Can Heal” was primarily recorded at Real World Studios, Bath and The Beehive, London but it also features live elements from Linnea Olsson (cello and vocal) and Jennie Abrahamson (vocal), “wonderful musicians,” recorded in Toronto during the Rock, Paper, Scissors Tour. Their two voices are joined by those of Melanie Gabriel and Ríoghnach Connolly on lead vocals creating “a warm, soft vocal blanket that surrounds you.”
This second August full moon release comes with artwork from the artist Antony Micallef and his work “a small painting of what I think love looks like.”
“Antony Micallef is a stunning painter. I’d seen some of his portraits and they are with thick layers of paint, so there were references to Auerbach and Bacon for me, just very physical, very powerful and I just fell in love. Those paintings, in some ways, are more brutal, but this one is so tender and I think Antony manages to capture a lot of that intimate tenderness around love that is very hard to put into pictures. I was delighted when he was happy to be part of this.”
“I was listening to a few of the songs and it’s interesting because it’s like putting on clothes and going ‘Oh, this suits me’ or ‘That doesn’t suit me,’” adds Micallef. “With ‘Love Can Heal,’ I could see my images coming up when I was hearing it so you begin to home-in and that’s how it starts. I love artists who take risks and Peter’s always chopped and changed and I like to do that too with my work and you know it doesn’t just rest on this one thing.”
Micallef also collaborated with Aardman on the video that accompanies the song, “Working with Aardman was amazing,” he says “I love processes, especially in other mediums and so I found the mechanics of how this stuff comes together really interesting.”
“Love Can Heal” comes with differing mix approaches from Mark “Spike” Stent (Bright-Side Mix), released on the full moon on August 31st, and also from Tchad Blake (Dark-Side Mix) and Hans-Martin Buff’s Atmos mix (In-Side Mix), released in mid-September on the next new moon.
