Trollheart's Comprehensive Guide to Genesis

[Trollheart]

Track title: "Since I Lost You"
Album: We Can't Dance
Era: 3
Year: 1991
Written by: Phil Collins
Subject: Love lost and trying to get over a broken heart
Type: Slow love song/ballad
Length: 4:10
Familiar? Yes
Rating: 8/10

Back we go to more recent Genesis and the penultimate album. I noted, the last time it came up, that there are some very fine tracks on We Can't Dance, but that it suffers from having to share space with too many sub-par tracks. Looking at it now for a moment, I can count, generally, seven tracks I would consider good or at least above par for Genesis at this late stage of their career, and six below. So I suppose that's almost 50/50, not as bad as I had thought. This is one of the better ones, and while I'm not entirely on board with the idea of Genesis ballads (there were the odd ones in the seventies, but they were few and far between) and have never considered them a band who should be writing love songs, this one is pretty good as ballads go.

To be completely honest, it wouldn't be out of place on a Phil Collins solo album, and hell, I could even see it holding its own on one by Mike and the Mechanics, but it's hard to really write a ballad that's different (listen to "Valentine" by Ten or "Under the Sun" by Threshold for examples) and this really isn't. It has a nice sort of swaying, bluesy rhythm and some sweet vocal harmonies, and the  melody is nice overall, even if it does kind of remind me stylistically of "In Too Deep" from Invisible Touch, another song with very much the Phil Collins stamp on it. The tiny little guitar solo is nice, but I must admit that at the moment the lyric really has a poignant effect on me, and it's quite hard to listen to.

[Trollheart]

Track title: "It's Gonna Get Better"
Album: Genesis
Era: 3
Year: 1983
Written by: Mike Rutherford
Subject: Recovery after a broken love affair; trying again
Type: Love song/ballad
Length: 5:14
Familiar? Yes
Rating: 7/10

The first track to come up from the self-titled 1983 album, it's almost heartening (though it's all random of course and really means nothing) that the title of this track offsets the lyrical matter of the previous one, which upset me so. I hope its prediction is correct, but it will, at the time of writing, be some time before I believe it. At any rate, I do remember that after being mostly shocked by the sharp left turn taken by the band on the previous album, I had been hoping this would see a return to their progressive rock roots, and on hearing the single "Mama" I did take heart. While it would be incorrect to say this is another Abacab - the presence of the suite "Home by the Sea" disproves this - it couldn't be said to be too distant a cousin to the album that came before it, and much less related to the one before that.

However, after suffering through tracks like "That's All", "Silver Rainbow" and (ugh) "Illegal Alien" I do recall being delighted to hear the sweeping synths of Tony Banks introducing this closing track on the album, and thinking, you know what? Maybe it will be. Three years later, of course, that hope would be seen to be very much a vain one. This is, again, a ballad, but if you will, a hopeful ballad. From the title, and the tone of the song, I often wondered was it a plea from the band to their fans not to give up, that better was coming? If so, they let us down badly. Invisible Touch this. But as a closing ballad it's not fantastic, and yet one of the better tracks on this album, which only goes to show perhaps how poor the rest of it is.

Interesting, too, to see that Mike wrote the two ballads on this album (though then again, he is responsible for the monstrosity that is "Illegal Alien"!) and I guess he doesn't do too bad a job with it. Like I say though, it's the swirling, sonorous tones of the synths that makes this song, as Tony caresses them in a way that he has not really since the second part of "Home by the Sea", the instrumental part imaginatively titled "Second Home by the Sea", and it's good to hear, something to hold on to and pin our hopes on, even if those hopes are dashed by the electronic thunder of the opening and title track of the next album.

[Trollheart]

Over nine months, later, and in the time a baby could have gestated and been born, I'm back, and, would you believe it, with a trio of tracks I don't like. Oh well, let's get it done.

Track title: "Robbery, Assault and Battery"
Album: Seconds Out (original on A Trick of the Tail)
Era: 2
Year: 1977
Written by: Phil Collins, Tony Banks
Subject: Robber talking about his life and getting "clean away"
Type: Bouncy uptempo satirical rock song
Length: 6:02 (originally 6:16)
Familiar? Very
Rating: 7/10

Ah, Seconds Out! Not only the first Genesis album I ever owned, but the one from which came my first ever review on Music Banter, in the Playlist of Life, way back in 2011! To be completely fair to it, this particular track was always one of my least favourite on the original album where it appeared, A Trick of the Tail: I thought it vulgar and somewhat in poor taste, given the lyrical matter. More like a kind of Victorian stage comedy piece than anything else, and for my money, resting very uneasily beside real prog tracks such as "Mad Man Moon", "Ripples" and "Squonk". It certainly affords Collins his chance to show off his acting skills, at least vocally, as he also does on Nursery Cryme's "Harold the Barrel", but it's all a little cockney humour for me.

It's a bouncy, foot-tapping track, evidence of which is shown when here, played live, the audience begin to clap along with it, but the idea of a criminal shooting a policeman and then getting away with it seems, well, as I said, in something of poor taste to me. The story is also poor. Robber is surrounded, but has "one more trick up his sleeve" - what trick? He shoots the cop, that's it. Hardly masterminding an escape now is it? While it is obviously meant to be taken as a comedy song, dark humour perhaps, I feel it's a little too flippant. If the cop had not been shot and the robber had just given them the slip, maybe. But adding in a murder seems to push the boundaries for me a bit too much, and also, given the uneasy relationship between the police and the British public at the time it was written, with the miners' strikes and all, maybe not too clever to be stoking the flames of resentment?

Yes, probably too deep into the lyric there, as usual, but it always annoyed me that they made light of such a subject, and I would wonder had any of the lads had their home burgled or knew any friends who had died in the line of duty, would they have been quite so blase about it? Even leaving that aside, it's, for me, not a great Genesis song, and sort of falls into the same category as "The Battle of Epping Forest" and "The Ballad of Big", where, to my mind, Genesis went into lyrical territory which they should have stayed out of. Good work by Tony on the trumpeting keys, and I like the sort of nod to "Firth of Fifth" in the middle eighth. The melody in itself is good, but it's just not a song I like.

[Trollheart]

Track title: "Who Dunnit?"
Album: Abacab
Era: 3
Year: 1981
Written by:  Phil Collins
Subject: Mystery I guess. Also a mystery how this shit got on the album!
Type: Loud, noisy, electronic mess
Length: 3:22
Familiar? Yes unfortunately
Rating: 0/10

How appropriate that, as we come to the first selection from my least favourite Genesis album it should also be my least favourite track on the album (and believe me, that is really saying something). In contrast to We Can't Dance, I can pick out four half-decent tracks here as opposed to five terrible ones, and I only include the title track because I've become used to it. But this? This is, not to put too fine a point on it, shit. I mean, what is it? Sure, Tony looked on it as a pet project, with all the electronic sounds and doodads, and Phil bashed away at the drums like that gorilla in the Cadbury ad, but Jesus wept! Well, he would have, had he listened to this. It's beyond awful.

The lyric, such as it is, has exactly eight lines in the verse and the chorus, again such as it is, has two! It makes no sense, unless you take it as literally what the title is, one of those murder mysteries, but there are no details and no suspects, not even a victim! It says on Wiki it was recorded over thirty minutes, and I can believe it. Surprised it even took that long. Look, I know I'm not a musician and don't obviously appreciate all the nuances that go into a composition like this, but listening to the end result it just sounds so terrible. And they considered releasing this as a single? Jesus, again, wept. The first selection here to get a zero rating from me, and to be honest, it doesn't even deserve that.

[Trollheart]

Track title: "Silver Rainbow"
Album: Genesis
Era: 3
Year: 1983
Written by: Tony Banks
Subject: Um, sex?
Type: Bouncy pop song
Length: 4:41
Familiar? Yeah
Rating: 3/10

Back to the 1983 self-titled we go, and this time it's another sad signpost on the way from Genesis the prog rock godfathers to Genesis the ordinary pop group, and eventually Genesis the nothing at all, as they split forever. Really sounding like something even Phil Collins would have nixed for one of his own solo albums, this is poor. Some interesting synthy effects and some nice guitar, but it's another one of those "humorous" songs that Genesis seemed to think were such a good idea as they approached both the tail-end, and the height (commercially speaking) of their career. Now we've already had (spit) "Illegal Alien", so why do we need another "funny" song? Answers on a postcard, please.

Apparently, for those who care, the silver rainbow of the title refers to the zip, presumably on a girl's skirt or jeans. Oh ho ho! How hilarious. Christ give me strength. I think originally I considered switching off the album at this point, but hell, I'd come so far, surely it was worth finishing? Well, sort of. I also don't like the slightly moany vocal harmonies here, but then, to be fair, I don't like anything about this song, nor indeed  that much of the album. "Beyond the silver rainbow you won't know if you're coming or going." Oh dear, someone get me a needle and some thread: I think my sides have just split.