...AND THEN THERE WERE THREE...

A lot of rather silly, negative things have been said about this album, many of them unfair. Sure, this was the beginning of a change of direction for Genesis towards a blander more mainstream/pop approach, but they had some way to go before they ever reached that unfortunate state.

In the main ATTWT is still somewhat in the 'prog' camp, but without the long extended tracks as in the past, although one track is over 7 minutes, another over 6 and the others mainly between 4 to 5 minutes long. But long tracks do not guarantee quality. At least half this album features songs which are top notch, such as the powerful opener, Down And Out with its unusual time signature, the heavy ballad, Undertow, and my favourite track Burning Rope. The Lady Lies is very good too, although it's not obvious until after a few listens, and these tracks are as good as anything Genesis has done previously. However it's not all great. For me there are a couple of unusually weak songs, Snowbound and Say It's Alright Joe, both written by Mike Rutherford. Even the one true pop song Follow You Follow Me is more enjoyable, and despite the prog fans general disgust of that song, at least it gave Genesis a much wider fanbase who were not aware of the band's previous work. Many newer fans discovered the 'old' Genesis through that song and therefore that can be no bad thing. Many fans seem to like Deep In The Motherlode, but it really doesn't do much for me. It's ok, but not a very interesting track, more a pop track with prog pretensions. I really like the shortest track, the pop/soul ballad Many To Many, which was possibly the first soul ballad that Phil Collins sang and something of a prototype for his near future career as a solo artist. Despite not being 'prog' it' works as a good, powerful song in its own right and some nice guitar from Rutherford as the track fades, who most of the time does a sturdy job compensating for the departure of Steve Hackett.

If I have one overall criticism of this album it's the dominance of Tony Bank's synthesizher on some songs, particularly on Burning Rope, although that's such a great track that he wrote it's forgiveable, and apart from 2 or 3 questionable tracks, ATTWTis still a pretty decent listen even by Genesis past standards.