...AND THEN THERE WERE THREE...

Genesis

Symphonic Prog

3.42 | 1698 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

This is the album "and then there were three" by Genesis. It was released in 1978 and was the first after Steve Hackett had left the band.

On this album the long instrumental passages are truncated a lot. The few instrumental parts that are left are really good, as inspiring as their best stuff, but there is much less of the long-instrumentals on this one. There is also a lot more of a verse/chorus/verse/chorus structure to the songs, so it could definitely be seen as more 'pop' oriented. In fact, excluding the first album, if you join Home by the sea with Second home by the sea on their 1983 album, this album has the shortest "Longest Song" at about 7 minutes flat for 'Burning Rope'.

To try and compensate for this, the band have given this one a big, sonic echoey sound to give it some prog edge. Also they throw up a lot of very striking synthesiser sounds. The songs also have a dark 'aura' surrounding them. In some way it's a bit hard to approach, with it's dark, swampy sound and songs with eerie melodies, but lacks the instrumental wizardy of the previous albums.

This album begins with a couple of exuberant pop-rockers "Down and out", "Ballad of Big" and a couple of very passionate ballads "Undertow" and "Snowbound". All these songs would get five stars from me. Unfortunately the first side is rounded out with "Burning Rope" which is a much less than passionate song. The second side begins with the excellent prog-blues/rock number "Down in the motherlode", but generally the second side is not as strong as the first, but still very strong with the fun "Scenes from a nights dream" and the melodic "Follow you follow me".

The band is in great shape, they are coming up with a lot of ideas, although avoiding more complex song structures. Tony is full of ideas, Phil is singing nicely and Rutherford is playing well, I mean you'd hardly realise Hackett wasn't there; maybe this was Hackett's last album "in spirit", with a guest appearance on "Duke's Travels" and "Duke's End". There are a couple of weaker tracks but generally a great album, plenty of 'atmospherics', maybe 4.5 stars, rounded up.

Brendan | 5/5 | 2005-4-10

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