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.