Selling England By the Pound (1973)
Leaving aside the debut (which I always do anyway) this is the first contentious Genesis album for me. It's not that I don't like it – I do – but I don't get the almost worshipful praise it tends to get, both from fans and critics. It's almost always seen as the best Genesis album (a claim I hotly dispute) and usually ranks high in lists of top prog albums too, and I just don't understand. It's, to me, nowhere near as good as
Wind and Wuthering or
Trespass or
A Trick of the Tail. I feel it has some good ideas, but a lot of poorly executed ones too, a lot of filler and doesn't gell well at all as a cohesive album, despite its having a theme running through it. It's let down by some very weak tracks and it's not an album I play much, if at all. Of course, it was the one to give Genesis their first hit single, so there is that, but even so, this tends to rank a lot lower on my own personal scale of favourite Genesis albums.
Dancing With the Moonlit Knight
Whether intentional or not, the opening of Selling England mimics that of Trespass, in that the first sound heard is Gabriel's unaccompanied voice for a few seconds, then the song settles into a kind of medieval mid-paced romp decrying the dilution of English values under the onslaught of American influences. The song features the title, there being no actual title track, and both the title and the lyric continue Gabriel's fascination with word play, the most obvious being “moonlit night” being turned to “moonlit knight”, and later in the song he references Green Shield Stamps, which those older and also not American may remember were little stamps given out when you got petrol. You collected them and for so many you could get, like maybe a hair dryer or a radio or something. It's a clever song, one of the better ones, and I do like it, particularly the almost fade/segue into the most famous track on the album.
10/10
I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)
The song that kind of unaccountably, to me, gave them a hit single, it's a gentle English pastoral poem featuring a lazy kid who'd rather listen to the birds as he snoozes in the garden than get a job. I have no real idea what it's about, and Gabriel's lyric is typically esoteric - “Getting better in your wardrobe/Stepping one beyond your show” (?) but it's a catchy tune and it works well. Also features the cleverly confusing line “Me? I'm just a lawn mower”, which makes you think that the protagonist is actually one of those Flymo things that people use for their gardens (well, I did, anyway) rather than someone who is mowing a lawn. Freaky, man! I do remember that there was a point when the song was to be on
Top of the Pops and the band would not be there. There was no video, so they had the resident dance troupe interpret it. They clearly couldn't (who could?) and I recall one scene where some of them were literally dancing with clothes in a mock-up wardrobe, probably thinking, like us all, what the hell is this all meant to be about?
10/10
Firth of Fifth
More clever wordplay, this time by Tony Banks, who had been writing this song since the sessions for
Foxtrot, and had actually hoped to have had the song included on that album, but had it rejected. So he worked on it more, and I don't know what the original was like but man is this a classic! Kicking off with a typically wonderful classical piano intro it then pounds into a slow, almost doomy heavy rock tune referencing gods and mythical beings, a long instrumental in the middle, and just when you think it will be all instrumental to the end there's one more verse, and then it tinkles away on soft piano as it began. Top class.
10/10
More Fool Me
A pointless little ballad, very much what we would come to see from Collins, and no surprise that he had a hand in writing this. It's also the second song on which he takes lead vocals. Reminds me of later “Many Too Many” from
And Then There Were Three, but without the quiet passion of that song, and really more like something you might have expected to find ten years or so later on
Face Value or
Hello I Must Be Going. Very much one of the weaker tracks.
4/10
The Battle of Epping Forest
One of two tracks that push almost the twelve-minute mark, I've spoken before and at length about my dislike for this track. To me, it's the complete antithesis of Genesis, not what you'd expect from them, but unexpected in a bad not a good way. “Harold the Barrel” may have been them stepping out of the box a little on
Nursery Cryme, but this is them kicking down the walls. It's clumsy, it's silly and it just seems totally inappropriate. The fictional account of an actual gang war, it tries to be funny but fails miserably, and the accents and voices used for the characters seem forced and stale. I won't go on: if you really want to read more of my ranting about this then check the full review in my journal. Here I'll just say, hands down, one of the worst Genesis songs ever written in my opinion.
1/10
After the Ordeal
Tony does his best to dispel the memory of Epping Forest with a nice little instrumental, but it will always be linked with that song in my mind, almost a coda or epilogue to it, and so I'll never truly be able to appreciate it on any other level. Pass.
4/10
The Cinema Show
After wobbling really badly since “Firth of Fifth”, the album finally rights itself in fine style with the second eleven-minute-plus track, more strange lyrics from this time Rutherford and Banks but some beautiful sound effects (check out the sound of wine pouring near the beginning), lovely choral vocals (probably made on the ARP Pro) and a lot of good changes. More mythology as Gabriel sings about Tiresias from Greek legend. Should have been a superb ending to a flawed album but ....
10/10
Aisle of Plenty
Nothing more than a reprise really of the opener, with Gabriel using the names of English supermarkets to make puns, in a way that, had he tried it today, probably would have landed him with several copyright lawsuits - “There's the safe way home” (Safeways), “Tess co-operates” (Tesco) while the title of the song, itself a pun, refers both to “isle of plenty” in a bitter saracastic description of England (“this sceptred isle”) and aisles in a supermarket. Clever, and bookends the album nicely, but ultimately I feel unnecessary.
5/10
Album Rating: 6/10