SELLING ENGLAND BY THE POUND

This album is the clearest snapshot of the strange balance Peter Gabriel found in those days between Victorian acid fantasy and contemporary absurdity, with a title ripped from a Labor Party slogan nestled in a track casted by moonlit Knights and unifauns. But where Gabriel's hoarse yet beautiful ramblings are very much 1973, the band fires on all cylinders and creates a timeless panorama of organ, mellotron, and guitar. Banks, Hackett, Rutherford, and Collins, after a couple albums of finding their sound, had coalesced into an accomplished and cohesive recording unit. After Gabriel's strident a capella introduction (obviously not having learned his lesson from "Looking for Someone") the band gives "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight" an ebb and flow highlighted by Hackett's innovative and melodic tapping solo. "I know What I Like," the band's first (minor) success in the singles market is a psychedelic spin on a British Invasion vintage descending appreggio describing the scene on the cover painting. After Gabriel's deadpan explanation "I'm just a lawnmower/you can tell me by the way I walk" the band goes into a flute tag that would be stretched into a showstopping jam in their quartet period. The Banks penned "Firth of Fifth," though desecrated with the most banal lyrics of his career is a compositional masterpiece nimble piano work and a jagged synthesizer solo. But once again the highlight is a masterfully fluid Hackett solo that packs more emotion in one minute than many guitarists can in a lifetime. After the gentle and plaintive folk tune "More Fool Me" in which Phil Collins gives a genuine and beautiful reading, the band returns to the epics with "The Battle of Epping Forest," a halfbaked collection of bits and parts which never fully comes together in 11 minutes of gangsters and protection rackets. The bittersweet and earthy instrumental "After the Ordeal" is next, which moves from an acoustic duel of guitar and piano to a weepy guitar outro. The album's key track is "The Cinema Show" a song almost otherworldly in its beauty, as the synthesizer solo becomes solemnly quiet over Collins gentle drumwork. And as only Gabriel can, the album ends with the reading of grocery prices over a calmly fading reprise of themes from the first track. After an album of staggering highs, there seems no better way to end it.

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