THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY

A turning point in the long and varied career of Genesis. Many will consider this to be their Tour de Force while others will consider it to be the beginning of the end for Genesis as a true progressive rock act. A combination of personal and creative reasons ushered Peter Gabriel out of the band after this one although fortunately one final tour materialized. Most of the album was concieved by Gabriel himself and features some of his more emotional and powerful contributions as a Genesis member. Listen To Carpet Crawlers and Back In NYC respectively, and you will see what I mean here. It also seemed that the rest of the band wanted to stay within the old formula which had finally been established on Foxtrot but the more ambitious Gabriel had other designs. The Cage is a standout piece and more in the tradition of the material on the earlier selling England and Foxtrot records at over 8 minutes in length while other little gems such as Fly On A Windshield and Broadway Melody of 1974 are not even given the chance and could have been developed into much longer explorations musically and thematically. All in all there is just a little too much here and could have been edited down to a 40 minute concept piece. At over an hour and a half in length you almost have to make an appointment with yourself in order to listen to it through in it's entirety. After this record Genesis sodiered on into a uncertain future with Phil Collins taking over on vocals while Peter Gabriel embarked on a splendid solo career. Personally this reviewer's favourite from the early Genesis era because of the Gabriel aspect of it, it should be appraoched precariously by those who are already familiar with earlier work from these progressive pioneers.