...AND THEN THERE WERE THREE...

This album actually starts well. Genesis, true to form, begin with an attention-grabber, the pounding "Down and out", which with its odd rhythms, persuades us that this might, despite the relative brevity of the songs, be in the old prog tradition. It has little in the way of development. The next song "Undertow" is well written, and rather inspiring in a torch song sort of way. But things go downhill. The awful "ballad of big" sounds like two poor songs stapled together, and incompetently stapled at that. "Snowbound" is a forgettable and twee children's tune about a snowman.

In terms of length, the 7 minutes of Burning Rope, as greater aspirations. It has a memorable chorus which deserved a better setting. "Deep in the motherlode" has a great instrumental hook, but the song itself is rather leaden, very synthetic sounding and full of hard drumming. A few years earlier the tune of "many too many" would have been the opening of a lengthy and adventurous prog track. Here is a used as a rather routine verse and chorus song with metronomic drum. "Scenes from a night's dream" is an enjoyable throwaway, albeit with way too much synth. "Say its alright Joe" again is two songs bolted together, a latenight smoothy for the verse with an energetic chorus. It doesn't really work. "The lady lies" is simply a bad song. It does not help that it is the second longest. But the performance is among the best on the album. The album closes with their hit "follow you, follow me" which is a well constructed pop song. 2.5 stars.

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