Still one of the great vocalists: Peter Gabriel, at OVO Hydro Glasgow, reviewed

Most artists begin an arena show with a bang: emerging from the floor, the gods, on a hoist, everything short of being sprung headfirst from a cannon. Touring for the first time in seven years, Peter Gabriel shrugged off such rote conventions. At 8 p.m. on the dot, he shuffled on alone in a flat cap, for all the world a man with nothing more on his mind than inspecting his spuds down at the allotment. He offered a few words, some avuncular jokes, a self-deprecating jibe at his appearance. I found myself bracing for a PowerPoint presentation, but the message was simple enough not to need one: there are no stars here.

The low-watt mood continued into the concert proper, which started almost without us noticing. Gabriel and bassist Tony Levin performed seated as a duo on ‘Washing of the Water’; beautiful, sad and gospel-tinged, as so many of Gabriel’s songs are. They were then joined around a virtual campfire by the rest of the band for ‘Growing Up’, but not before Gabriel had introduced all the musicians, something he did several times thereafter. He went to almost painful lengths to emphasise that this was a team effort – and it was quite the team, its number including Levin, guitarist David Rhodes and drummer Manu Katché, a gold-standard crop of session players.

Gabriel has always sought, perhaps a little too earnestly, to apply new technological advances to his interrogations of the human condition. There was some amiable Mad Professor spiel before ‘Panopticom’, a new song which was both punchy and self-parodic. As the video screens flickered to life, showing specially commissioned work by everyone from Ai Weiwei to Cornelia Parker, the dynamics of a Big Rock Show finally and dutifully kicked in, but the conversational prelude ensured that the personal connection had been established and was never lost.

It was a smart trick for an artist playing a lot of unfamiliar material.