THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY

Being a fan of all eras of Genesis, where do you start with The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway? In the whole Genesis oeuvre, it is a totally unique piece of music. There is an obvious progression from Trespass to Foxtrot. Selling England By The Pound was a softer album but the band recaptured some of that spirit on A Trick Of The Tail. There was then another progression through Wind And Wuthering through to Duke, before the onset of the more commercial period starting with Abacab. But The Lamb... is totally unlike anything else the band ever did. Many people have given their interpretations of the storyline, so I won't bore you with mine, suffice to say that probably only Peter Gabriel really knows what it's all about. If I was being really picky, I would admit that aspects of the storyline are simply too bizarre or weird for me. But the music for me is quite simply awesome. I love all the 70s Genesis albums but I feel I know them inside out and nothing really surprises me any more. Not that that's a criticism. But The Lamb... still has the capacity to surprise and amaze me - a guitar sound I hadn't noticed before, an appreciation of Gabriel and Collins vocals in perfect harmony, some fantastic chord sequence by Banks, etc. - even after all these years. It also features a combination of tracks which can be taken out of context to stand alone and still sound good - e.g. the title track, In The Cage, Back In N.Y.C., Carpet Crawlers, Anyway, The Lamia and The Colony Of Slippermen - and tracks that sound great in the context of the bigger picture - Fly On A Windshield, Hairless Heart, Silent Sorrow In Empty Boats and Ravine. Some people refer to the latter two tracks as "filler" but I would dispute that, unless "filler" means "no good if taken out of context". The mellotron sounds on Silent Sorrow... are gorgeous. Fly On A Windshield is amazingly powerful - "Pharoahs going down the Nile" was, I think, Mike Rutherford's description. Hairless Heart is a quite sublime instrumental. Even the cover has a slightly hypnotic quality and when I was a youngster looking through the record racks having only heard "Follow You Follow Me", the sleeve of The Lamb... had a certain undefinable aura. One could ask was it brave or foolish for a very English band to set their story (his story, as the words were almost all Gabriel's) in New York? My answer would be brave and that it succeeded, although your average New Yorker might disagree. However in summary, this album is a must have as far as I'm concerned and is well worthy of the full 5 stars.