FOXTROT

There are rare occasions where words fail; to call "Foxtrot" "sublime" or attach any series of suitably descriptive words to it merely traps in an ordinary jelly jar what was meant to exist outside of it. Hearing "Foxtrot", really hearing it, will change the way you look at music altogether. "Nursery Cryme" was an inspired record, but not a perfect one, as this is. It's one thing to aspire to art through music, but quite another to turn each instrument into an individual paintbrush, as happens here. Perhaps "camera" is the better word, since it's from five separate vantage points that the scenery takes three-dimensional shape.

From the first moments that Tony BANKS heralds "Watcher of the Skies," it's clear that this is a different GENESIS. Peter GABRIEL inhabits the songs like a foot in a well-worn shoe, wiggling into different characters with ease and aplomb. With Mike RUTHEFORD's bass providing the foundation, Phil COLLINS' drums are free to add delicious commentary throughout the record, underscoring gentle passages with a well-placed tap on the bell, ushering in stormclouds of sound with dexterous rolls on the drums. And of course there's Steve HACKETT, his electric guitar sliding in and out of the music like sunrays through clouds.

Although the nearly side-long "Supper's Ready" is the album's focal point (and perhaps their magnum opus), every song on "Foxtrot" is stellar. Conjuring the past in "Time Table", scrying a bleak, not-too-distant future in "Get 'Em Out By Friday", inventing new gods on "Watcher of the Skies" and "Can-Utility And The Coastliners", these songs are at the heart of what progressive rock can accomplish. There are precious few albums that transcend music to become epics in their own right ("Close to the Edge" and "Minstrel in the Gallery" come to mind). GENESIS duplicated the magical feat on "Selling England By The Pound", but it detracts not one iota from Foxtrot's achievement. This record, to my tastes, represents one of the great musical works of the 20th century.