ABACAB

Well, this is one is one of those famous records that caused many of the rage lots of prog fans suffered in the early 80s. Seeing how terrible and negative have the reviews of this record been and given the taste I have developed to Genesis music recently, I had to take a listen to this one. And I have to admit that, as many transitional albums (this album still is one), it is quite difficult to make a precise review without falling into snobbism. So, at least I'll try.

As I constantly repeat, I am a fan of new wave, and proud of it, and that doesn't avoid me to appreciate the pure talent and musicianship of progressive records from the 70s. So, the problem of this album is not the change of direction (which started to be neccesary after all, they had been over a decade in the business), previously announced in ATTWT and Duke. The main problem I find in this album is that it quite ackward and stylistically chaotic, giving strange and unsuspected changes of quality between songs and even inside a particular song. So, we can find pieces of remarkably good sound, in songs like "Another record","Like it or not" or "Dodo/lurker"(although the keyboard section at the end is terrible), having good piano arrangements and good atmospheres in some of them. But, ununderstandably, moments like these are interleaved with really embarrasing passages which are not expected of musicians of this kind. "No reply at all" is one the songs that I guess made early Genesis fans furious because of its insulting simplicity (it is too obvious even for a 80s pop song. Come on, even younger new wave stars could do it better). Songs like "Abacab" or "Keep it dark" move cleanly in the land of mediocrity, not being exactly awful songs (well, at least not when you listen some times to them) but they are placed in a quite low scale. But the most stunning and breathtaking surprise that came to me (and I guess to many people by that time) is "Who Dunnit?". As I mentioned before, this record (as well as probably every single one from here onwards) moves constantly from the good side to the bad side (like a drunk folk). But this "song?" is probably one of the biggest disasters these three men even dared to perform, and I fail to find any excuse to the inclusion of this piece in any possible album of any possibly called serious band. It is a pity, because I don't think this album was as extremely bad as many people have claimed here.

So, this record is not probably the most fortunate of the Genesis catalogue, although I would like to insist in the fact that, keeping "Who dunnit?" apart, this record doesn't deserve so harsh reviews