FROM GENESIS TO REVELATION

This is the first Genesis album. It was much more in the vein of late-60's pop music. They were given a massive task to do lyrically, to try and recreate the history of man, usually coming up with quite interesting lyrics.

This is a nice collection of 60's pop gems. If there were progressive touches, it would be brief piano/guitar interludes between songs. Their playing and sound is a bit amateurish, but not too bad. There are also some well chosen string and brass arrangements that help add to the songs.

If there is something good about this album, it is that the boys were writing good melodies, some good hooks and had some well-written songs under their sleeve. The highlights here are "Fireside song", "The Serpent", "Am I very wrong" (which features the other band members singing in a vocal group style), "the conquerer" and my favourite "In the wilderness" which is highly infectious. The fairly straight-forward "In hiding" is a nice folky song and "The silent sun" is quite catchy, a decent single. The songs "One Day" and "Window" are love songs, fairly uncharacteristic of the band, but the lyrics aren't bad either.

Peter Gabriel was also singing very nicely on this album.

On the downsides, the production is a bit weak, burying the lead vocals in the back-ground now and then, particularly on "Window" and "In Limbo". The sound in the original mix is very rough and dull, the strings adding a bit of colour. Even with them there, the sound is always a bit like a rough mix. We're not really hearing a lot of instrumental mastery, but then we heard plenty of that later so I'm quite happy to sit back and enjoy a nice late-60's album like this.

We know Genesis went on to become much more ambitious than this album but it is an enjoyable listen. I wonder how this would be rated if it were a Moody Blues album? Anyway, I think this is about 7/10 or 3 1/2 out of 5.