ABACAB

I just don't understand the general consensus towards this album. Why is there all of this hatred? This isn't the album where Genesis sold out. DUKE was the sellout album!!! ABACAB is an attempt to reinvent the band sound into more of a power trio. They didn't stick with it, though, and drifted back towards an updated DUKE sound to close out their career.

If a new band had released this album instead of Genesis, people might have said two things.

1. Hey, that's pretty good. 2. They sure sound like they were heavily influenced by Genesis's A Trick of the Tale.

This is a prety darn good album. Sure, there's a little cheese to "Me and Sarah Jane," but no more than to some of the tracks off Wind and Wuthering. "No Reply at All" and "Man on the Corner" have the Phil solo sound, but it's some of the best of the Phil solo sound (no motown, thank God, although we do get horns.) "Abacab" and "Dodo/Lurker" (the two best tracks) both sound like dark versions of what the band was doing on A Trick of the Tale, while "Keep it Dark" isn't far behind in quality. All of that is great stuff. "Another Record" and "Like it or Not" are mediocre, and "Whodunnit" is frankly bad, but there's an awful lot of good stuff to counterbalance that.

Genesis doesn't go on life support until the NEXT album.

This one is worth 3.5 stars, but I'm rounding up this time.