NURSERY CRYME

This is one of the first albums of Genesis I came to knew since my dad own copy. It isn't until recently I have listened to it more intensively though. I bought my own CD copy of this this spring just before they released the new better remaster. The record starts with one of their earliest tour de force: The Musical Box. This song contains a lot of atmosphere, sometimes spooky (It can be described as Ghost Story.) and sometimes mourning with Hackett's wonderful guitar. He does good on his first album altough most of the material, if I'm not wrong, was written before he joined the band. 5/5 For Absent Friends is a shorter piece with Phil doing his first vocal appearence. A softer song wich suite Phil's voice. Good, but maybe a bit misplaced between The Musical Box and The Return Of The Giant Hogweed. 3/5 Next on is as said The Return Of The Giant Hogwed. It begins with keyboards sounding like an old Nintendo game, but this is at least 10 years older than the TV-game music. Somewhat funny but thats more the credit of the music than the lyrics. It becomes really good in the instrumental ending section. 4/5 Seven Stones is again a softer song and it would hav been better if Phil got to sing it. He is better than Pete on that. We would learn that the hard way later... In my opinion the worst song on the album. Still better than most of their 80s pop songs. 2.5/5 Harold The Barrel is funny. Peter does good narrating the different characters of the song. Funny lyrics like like "If your father were alive he'd be very, very, very upset". 4/5 Harlequin is another short piece and like For Absent Friends it feels like a filler. Beutiful. peter shows that he can sing ballads too (Doesn't matter if Ballad-king Phil would sing it instead.) 3.5/5 The last one is Fountain of Salmacis. It recreates the myth of the boy Hermaphroditus and Salmacis the nymph. Very good lyrics, very good music. Second only to The Musical Box on this album. I fisrt heard this song as a more stompy live version of this for the belgian television back in the early 70s. That one is more rock but missing the fine narrator chorus of the original. The instrumental parts are also better here. 4.5/5 Conclusion: An album that starts and ends very good but in between it have some up and downs. 3.7/5 = 4/5