SELLING ENGLAND BY THE POUND

Selling England by the Pound is the only album I own that I want to give a perfect score to, but simply cannot because it does not deserve it. It has a brilliant atmosphere, unparalleled in Genesis's discography, and it has 3 of Genesis's greatest songs ("Dancing with the Moonlit Knight," "Firth of Fifth," and "Cinema Show"), which are good enough to resuscitate an album mired by a mediocre song, but there are blights upon this disc that so blemish its brilliance, it practically hurts.

There are two purely pop songs on this record, "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)" and "More Fool Me." Taken purely as pop songs, they are both fairly competent, but slightly grating. The better of the two is "I Know What I Like" for its delightfully odd English imagery and unique (in Genesis's discography) musical introduction. "More Fool Me" is a solo acoustic song with Phil Collins on vocals, and despite having a catchy chorus, the song is totally bland. Strangely, I cannot imagine Selling England By th Pound without these two songs. They both pale in comparison to all other songs on this album, but it feels like their pieces of a mosaic that would not feel complete if they were missing.

Now, the only other song that is not totally glorious on Selling England is "The Battle of Epping Forest." It's quite an odd song; a gang battle narrative. While it does give Gabriel a chance to offer his varied vocal talents by voicing various townspeople, the song drags on a bit and never has anything very interesting to say. Of all the songs on Selling England by the Pound, including the two previously mentioned pop songs, "The battle of Epping Forest" is the most forgettable.

Everything else is almost beyond words for me. If I were writing this for some sort of publication, I'd flesh out my review a bit to describe the other songs in full, but I'm sure the many, many reviewers before me did so to a great effect. The bottom line is regardless of its faults, Selling England by the Pound is absolutely essential, even though the rating I'm giving it now does not explicitly mean "Essential: a masterpiece of progressive music." It is.