Peter Gabriel confronts the inevitability of death on his new song “Face the Wall,” the latest track off the singer’s upcoming studio LP oi.
Like all previous songs from o/i — and its predecessor, Gabriel’s 2023 album i/o — the track was recorded with both a “Bright-Side Mix” and “Dark-Side Mix”; fittingly, for a song about dying, Gabriel has provided the “Dark-Side Mix” of the Tchad Blake-produced “Face the Wall”:
“The lyric is partly about getting older, facing illness, and it’s looking death in the face, which I think we don’t do enough of. I know I’ve talked about this before, but cultures which seem to include death as a normal part of life seem more comfortable with it and live life to the full. That was the starting point,” Gabriel said in a statement.
“Music is a cathartic process for a lot of us and when I’m singing at the end, ‘I see you coming through’ that is a cathartic moment. I think that is an important line; conditions are getting worse and more intense as the song progresses, but with that lyric it suggests there is a reason to be hopeful. You never quite know when you’re in the studio whether the song is going to be a vehicle that can carry people, or not. I know this is going to speak to some people.”
The song was accompanied by a photograph of Tadashi Kawamata’s “The Nest. Amos Rex,” a sculpture where an avalanche of wooden chairs descends down a building to an oddly placed stairwell. “I wasn’t aware of Tadashi Kawamata’s work before seeing this image, but this was the thing that got me excited. I thought it was perfect for this song and got me looking at a lot of his other work,” Gabriel added.
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Gabriel has been slowly releasing songs from oi since 2026 began, with a new track arriving on every full moon. The process began with “Been Undone (Dark-Side Mix),” which came out on Jan. 3. Since then, the full moons have brought “Put the Bucket Down”, “A Hard Lesson”, and “I Belong to the Sky.”
“Face the Wall” marks the 10th song off oi, with two more tracks likely before Gabriel puts out the album in its entirety. Details of that release have not yet been announced yet.
