Album title: Trespass
Artist: Genesis
Nationality: English
Label: Charisma
Chronology: 2
Grade: A
Previous Experience of this Artist: 100%; my all-time favourite band
The Trollheart Factor: 10
Landmark value: As the first album (proper) from the band who would become the godfathers of prog, its landmark value cannot be overstated.
Tracklisting: Looking for Someone/White Mountain/Visions of Angels/Stagnation/Dusk/The Knife
Comments: An album I could review without even listening to it. And so I will. I’ve said before that it’s interesting - perhaps coincidental, perhaps intentional - that the first sound we hear is the voice of the man who would become, up until his departure in 1975, the one most associated with the band, as Peter Gabriel’s dulcet tones ring out. But “Looking for Someone” is no ballad and it rocks pretty hard, Tony Banks making his presence felt with heavy Hammond organ and other keys, then “White Mountain” would be, to an extent, built on and developed by Rush a few years later. Possibly (though I couldn’t say for sure) the first prog song written from a non-human perspective, it takes as its subject a power struggle between wolves, and features a dark, doomy section in the middle which sort of has Grieg overtones in a way. “Visions of Angels” is the ballad, but here Gabriel does what few other singers had done before - probably learned from, copied from or given the idea by the vocal stylings of Peter Hammill - and makes what should be almost a love song bitter and full of recrimination. I’ve remarked in a fuller review of the album that Gabriel takes something of a chance here too, claiming God has abandoned his people. Nothing now, of course, but surely controversial in the button-down 1970s.
“Stagnation” follows the rather weird tale of a man living alone underground, and features some very frenetic keyboard and hard guitar, leading to something of a crescendo where everything stops and Gabriel speaks, rather than sings, the word “Wait” before taking the next part of the song gently along. It also allows him to display his considerable vocal range, at one point his vocal almost warping in a precursor perhaps to his performance on the later “Colony of Slippermen”. It ends on a pretty powerful fanfare-like chant, and then “Dusk” is sung almost
sotto voce, another ballad with some lovely classical guitar and leading into the perhaps unexpectedly rocky and anarchic “The Knife”, where a revolutionary plots to overthrow the government, heedless to how many lives it may cost. From opening gently and quietly the album comes to a roaring, rousing finish, stating in no uncertain terms that Genesis have arrived.
Favourite track(s): Everything
Least favourite track(s): Nothing
Overall impression: Quickly became one of my favourite Genesis albums, and always will be. Amazing to see how in one short year the band have developed and grown out of the almost folky, gentle tones of their debut to stamp their identity on the burgeoning progressive rock movement, and ensure that they would not be just along for the ride, but would help direct its course.
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