TRESPASS

The massive jump in quality from the poor, pop oriented 'From Genesis To Revelation' to this is not to be understated, as within the space of this one album, the distinct sound of Genesis was already being formed, with much more mature compositions and all around much greater performance. Despite this, this is far from an album which I would consider perfect, despite the incredible leaps in quality. Nonetheless, this is still an album which I find to be of merit, and definitely one that I have listened to quite a number of times.

'Looking For Someone' is a passable song, with some great use of mellotron and organ throughout, building in intensity as it continues going through, with a particularly noteworthy instrumental passage at the end. While this is by no means one of the peaks of 'Genesis', it is nonetheless an impressive song. There are two songs on the album that give me quite a high opinion of the album overall, those being 'White Mountain' and 'The Knife'. 'White Mountain' is a soft, absolutely beautiful acoustic piece with some of my favourite vocal melodies by the band. The layering present here provides some great imagery to go along with the lyrics as well, which while it's something that becomes much more noticeable and impressive on later albums, is still great here. 'The Knife' is definitely the best song here, being a dark, intense track filled with energy. This is definitely one of the more aggressive songs that the band wrote, and overall, it's no wonder that this became the first 'Genesis' classic, as it just gets it right on so many levels. As a whole, the album manages to sound quite delicate and pleasant throughout, without any moments which I could truly call bad.

Despite my overall fond opinion of the album, I cannot deny some large flaws that 'Trespass' contains. The largest one is the overall thin production, which does take some atmosphere and power away from the greater moments on the album, while also weakening the aspects that were already nothing to write home about. I feel like if 'The Knife' was written on a later album with sound mixing and production worked out much better, what is already a formidable track could have become even greater. My other issue is the fact that 'Visions of Angels', 'Stagnation' and 'Dusk' all do nothing for me, with all of them feeling fairly uninspired for the most part. While there are some good moments on these, such as the well executed crescendo on 'Stagnation', on the whole, I just don't find them to be anything special, and it does make the middle portion of the album quite dull.

Overall, despite the monumental jump in quality and maturity compared to 'From Genesis To Revelation', 'Trespass' has enough flaws on it to have me consider it quite non essential, and so I feel as if a 3 star rating is appropriate. I definitely consider the highlights of the album to be worth listening to, and they're undoubtedly why I've listened to this album a lot despite finding half of it mediocre. At the very least, the album manages to maintain a very pleasant nature about it until the final track, which ups the ante in such an enjoyable way. I'd recommend giving this album a listen after going through the peak of the Peter Gabriel era of 'Genesis', as it definitely shows many of the building blocks that would make up these albums, and is still a decent listen.

Best songs: White Mountain, The Knife

Weakest songs: Visions of Angels, Dusk

Verdict: Anyone who enjoys the main portion of the Peter Gabriel output of Genesis will find something to enjoy here, but I do recommend that those albums are listened to before this