THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY

Yes, it's a classic. Yes, it's an essential purchase for anyone who wants to understand progrock in even the slightest bit, if only for its historical importance. But that doesn't necessarily make it a good album. To be honest, I'm not a fan of Peter Gabriel. I appreciate much of his work with Genesis but don't care at all for the egocentric puppetry on stage and his silly voices on record. He could have been a great singer but chose to be a lousy actor instead. For people who like Gabriel for what he is, The Lamb might well be his finest moment. To me, who never liked the theatrical aspect of prog, this is a mixed bag. There are some terrific songs on here, enough to earn this album three solid stars, but there are also more than a few bad ones, enough to make me dam sure that I don't want to give more than those three stars. Some of the good songs could have been better if only they had been a bit shorter. The pretentious, actually rather ridiculous, "story" doesn't do any good either. It all starts very promising, the opening track is fantastic, but the promise isn't kept. Actually the first disc is mostly OK, but the second disc is spoiled by some of the worst songs Genesis ever recorded, until the 1980's of course when what was left of the band did things that were even worse, and a rather disgusting story about eating rotting flesh, slimy men and cutting off penises. You'd at least expect a good ending to all this, but instead the closing track It is just nothing at all. Like there was supposed to be a third disc. Throw out the bad stuff like Lifeless Packaging, Anaesthetist, Slippermen and It and shorten the Cage, Crawlers and Lamia, and you get a 45- to 60-minutes masterpiece worthy of five stars.