Gabriel’s first album of new original material in over twenty years – drawing on sessions with many collaborators going as far back as the mid-nineties – was first released in a way that just seemed very him somehow, with new tracks, each presented in at least two separate mixes (‘bright’ and ‘dark,’ sometimes lightly differentiated in the end), sometimes more, surfacing throughout 2023 pinned to a lunar calendar cycle. When collated and presented as an overall album featuring each set of mixes at the end of that year, what was essentially a fragmentary experience became an enjoyable late career sweep through a variety of sonic styles he had long demonstrated skill and success with. The air of stridency that’s been part of his art since Genesis was certainly on evidence with songs like the snaky stomp of “The Court” and “Road to Joy”’s punch. But what stands out more is a sense of warm feeling and retrospection – “Playing For Time,” I/O’s first ballad, is a quietly yearning contemplation of mortality, while “Live And Let Live” ends everything on an uplifting choir-accompanied note that feels, simply, just right.