THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY

A first whole listen of this album i'm sure has always and will always greatly surprise a Genesis fan, Banks,Hackett,Rutherford and Collins are all using different souding instruments to their last 3 albums and everything sounds generally different with weird sound effects and more aggresive with Gabriel pushing hard on the vocals ( first track ). But after a few more listens everybody will recognize the musicians of the last 3 ( 4 ) albums . So the group has taken a different direction and are progressing, wise choice ?

Lyrically you can't get a better concept album: mysterious, obscur, full of allegories, lyrics that have several meanings, 34 years later all the lyrics have not been fully understood but were would be the fun when listening to progrock if you understood all the lyrics at the first listen ^^. The main character is a boy called Rael living in New York who get's suckked in a strange underworld ( the purgatory or is Rael mad and imagining all this ) where meets lots of strange characters( Lamias, The Supernatural Anaesthetist, The Slippermen, Lilywhite Lilith ) and his brother John who keeps abandonning everytime he falls in a dangerous situation. Rael through all this reexperiences his life in the underworld sex, death, religion ( the chamber of 32 doors is suppose to represent the choice of religion with all these different doors leading here and there with a priest pointing there, the magicien there and the parents also pointing somewhere I havn't really understood this song ). I think the slippermen are maybe there to represent the dangers of sex ( AIDS, syphillis etc... ) the Lamias the people who tempt you to it he then has to be castrated not to become a slipperman to have his manhood stolen by a raven a metaphore ? Anyway lyrically this is the best and one of the most complicated albums to understand.

Musically this album is very interesting but interesting is not always a good thing, fortunetely here it is this album his unique in it's music with some really good tracks " Fly On A Windshield", "The Lamia", "Anyway", "Carpet Crawlers", "In The Cage" ,the tracks are nearly always good but in 94 min there are the fillers "Ravine" "The Waiting Rome" " Silent Sorrow In Empty Boats" who add to the musical atmosphere but that many people will find irritating and useless, some songs who are a bit poppy "Counting Out Time" "Lilywhite Lilith" and some with strange sound effects "The Grand Parade Of Lifeless Packaging".

A masterpiece no doubt about it ,the best of the progressive double cd concept albums Musically very good you won't want to go away when listening to this, lyrically well the best album there is to me anyway ;-).

Franco-English sry for the spelling mistakes.