DUKE

This is about as far as a prog fan needs to go with Genesis, and this album doesn't disappoint, well not much at least. It's clear they were moving into pop at this point, probably as a result of the surprise success of Follow You Follow Me on their last album. Misunderstanding and Alone Tonight are good examples of this. Another hit, Turn It On Again, is actually a pretty good song, and represents trio Genesis probably better than all of their other hits. Cul-De-Sac and Heathaze are forgettable, but not necessarily bad, and Man of Our Times is actually really good.

But the real strength of the album is the bookended Duke Suite, the concept of this album. Behind The Lines comes in strong with a long instrumental intro, very reminiscent of Rush from the same period. The song flows seamlessly into Duchess, an excellent song, and then Guide Vocal, a short song that will be the recurring theme at the end of the album in Duke's Travels. Duke's Travels is probably the last great Genesis song instrument-wise. Banks actually uses the hammond organ for the last time here, which brings back a lot of great memories of their earlier Gabriel period. Duke's End reprises the instrumental that began the album giving the album a tidy and fitting end.

So you get about 45 minutes of great music on this album, and about 10 minutes of not so good music. Not too bad. There's no need to get any more Genesis albums that were released after this unless you're a real fan. This is as good as the trio ever got.

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