Gig review: Peter Gabriel at AO Arena, Manchester

An understated bulb, doubled as an illustrative meteor, hangs above Peter Gabriel as he pads across the stage and takes his place around a makeshift campfire arrangement with bassist Tony Levin.

The light bounces off their shiny bald pates, illuminating a stripped-down Washing of the Water between them. “When we started, we both had a head of handsome hair,” he softly quips, to low chuckles.

Nine years have passed since the 73-year-old last toured British shores; save a joint North American run with Sting in 2016, where the pair traded greatest hits like Panini stickers, it has been seven since he played anywhere.

Pent-up demand has not fully materialised however; empty pockets dot Manchester’s cavernous AO Arena, while a date in Nottingham was quietly shelved for “logistical problems”.

Naysayers might lay the blame at his set selection.

Over a two-act performance that crawls towards the three-hour mark, progressive rock’s most forward-facing patrician leads his audience on a philosophical anti-nostalgia trip preoccupied with life, death and technology, half-filled by material from upcoming record i/o, his long-awaited follow-up to 2002's Up.

Few septuagenarians have the audacity to gamble like this – but then, Gabriel has rarely walked with the rest of the herd.

It helps that the new stuff is as robustly brilliant as anything since So made him a mid-Eighties blockbuster draw.

Once the opening interlude transitions from quaint acoustic folksiness to beefy full-band formation – underpinned by regulars Levin, guitarist David Rhodes and drummer Manu Katché – they arrives en masse, punctured by the occasional concessionary hit and backed by an eye-popping multimedia display.

Panopticom burbles along with electronic flourishes, while Four Kinds of Horses and Playing for Time excel among an oeuvre of foreboding balladry.

The title track is a shot of buoyantly brassy pop; a fitting reminder that the ex-Genesis frontman's genre-hopping talents remain well-nourished.

Still, it is the classics that truly enervate the crowd; Sledgehammer, arriving at the end of the first half, practically poleaxes everyone with its sex-funk wallop.

Darkness, Red Rain and Don't Give Up, brimming with industrial tranquility and sweeping bombast, are rapturous; weathered by age, the punchy bounce of Solsbury Hill still sits undimmed.

A double encore of In Your Eyes and Biko perhaps best encapsulates Gabriel’s creed as the evening comes to a close; even when drawn to the past in his live return, he remains timelessly, tirelessly tilted towards the future.