Music Banter - View Single Post - Trollheart's Album Discography Reviews: Genesis

Trollheart · 10-20-2021, 12:03 PM

Abacab (1981)

Ah yes, the album that almost did for me with Genesis! After the sublime Duke, this was one hell of a bitter pill to swallow, and it's got Phil Collins' muddy handprints all over it. A huge shift of direction for Genesis, you can pinpoint this as the moment they stopped being a progressive rock - or even a rock - band, and succumbed entirely to pop and bland songs. I'm afraid that even forty years later I still have very little good to say about it. I hated it when it came out, and I only bought it because I'm a huge Genesis fan, but it grated on me. I played it through a few times, but never felt the urge to do so for pleasure; I just wanted to see if it got any better than the title track and lead single. It really doesn't.

Well, that's not quite fair. There are a few good tracks on it. Well, no, not really. Let's say there are a few that are not as bad as the general low quality of music on the album, but there are probably about two songs I would listen to again, if I had to. Although the decision to change their style so radically was, according to Mike Rutherford, a group one, you can't help but feel that Phil had a huge input into what they eventually released: so much of Abacab is similar to the sort of pop pap he peddled, and continues to peddle, on his solo albums.

It opens with the title track, and this was for me where it all began to go wrong. Okay, it has its prog moments, but generally this is driven by a very pop melody: it's fast, it's stripped-down, it's commercial. It's not the Genesis I had grown up with and loved. This was all right for the charts, but I don't want a full album of this! Sadly, I got my wish, but sort of would have preferred not to have. Far from all being songs like the title, much of the tracks on Abacab are far worse, many so bad in fact that they make the opener sound great, and that can't be good. I mean, the song doesn't even make any sense! ”When you wake in the morning/ Wake and find you're covered in cellophane/ There's a hole in there somewhere...” What?

People say that Duke showcased a new Genesis, a move away from the longer, progressive compositions of their previous years, but I don't agree: I still think that was a great prog rock album, and while it may have yielded some of their bigger hit singles, I would not have ever considered it a pop album. After all, ...And Then There Were Three gave them their biggest hit ever, “Follow you follow me”, and no-one would accuse them of being pop on that album! But this is definitely pop. “No Reply At All” is a pure pop tune, which cosys up rather unsettlingly to Collins' “I Missed Again”. The addition of the horn section from Earth, Wind and Fire just, for me, pulls Genesis further off their usual course and takes them into territory which would be successfully trod by their frontman for the next few years, but which never suited his band.

Things pick up a little in terms of song quality then for “Me and Sarah Jane”, one standout on an album which has few. Not surprisingly, it's helped achieve this status by being a song solely composed by Tony Banks, without any interference from Phil “I-have-a-solo-career-now” Collins, who seemed to think his direction for the band was the only one. Banks does his best to pull the ship hard-a-port and back towards their progressive roots with an atmospheric, tense and dramatic song which recalls the best of Duke, with soft percussion and breathy organ, the typical kind of Genesis lyric we've become used to, and expect, with some very nice understated guitar from Mike Rutherford. It's also one of the longer songs on the album, at six minutes exactly. Even the slightly reggae rhythm doesn't overshadow the power or melody of this song.

There's even a synthy midsection that reminds me of “Eleventh Earl of Mar” from Wind and Wuthering, and for six minutes you can start to really believe that the first two tracks were just aberrations, that you may have to skip over them next time you spin the album, but that now at last Abacab is back on track, and all is well with the world. Unfortunately, that's far from the case, as “Keep It Dark” amply demonstrates, with its annoying squeaky synth (oh, Tony! How could you?) and although there's a rocky guitar line held by Rutherford, it's a pretty weak song which tries to tell a song of alien abduction but ends up getting a little lost along the way. It does inject a little of that old Genesis synth and keyboard sound, but when it reaches the chorus, which is disappointingly flat.

Ah, let's be honest: it's not the worst track on the album (that's yet to come!) and I do have a sneaking place in my heart for the two-part “Dodo/Lurker”, which between them make up the longest track on the album at seven and a half minutes. Starting off with powerful synth and guitar, the song soon settles into a decent groove, Banks' keys again a little light and bubbly for my tastes, but not too annoying. Rutherford keeps the hard guitar line he's famous for while Collins sings about, well, the dodo. Actually, the song seems to be about man hunting creatures to extinction for profit. I think. Again, there's a reggae beat to at least the first part of the song, “Dodo”, exacerbated by Collins' infuriating attempts at singing in that vein, but Banks and Collins pull the song back on track, then “Lurker”, the second part, becomes a proper prog-rock monster, Banks' warbling keys working here where before they seemed so out of place, then replaced with heavy synth, sharp guitar from Rutherford holding the line.

But that's it. We're now into the worst track on the album, and the worst Genesis song ever. The truly awful “Whodunnit” sounds like someone trying - unsuccessfully - to write their first song. It's really pathetic. Talk about simple. Big blasting drums and sliding bass under Collins' “inspired” lyric - ”Was it you, or was it me/ Was it he or was it she?” and the equally annoying chorus, if it can be called such, consisting of the words ”We know” repeated, then back to the verse, another chorus and then the drums crash into the ending, the whole thing falling away in a fading drop of pitch-bend as if even it has given up. I really can't say how much I hate this song: at three minutes twenty-three seconds it's exactly three minutes twenty-three seconds too long. Awful, just awful. How could one of my favourite bands have unleased this tripe on us?

It gets a little better, though not that much. “Man On the Corner” is a nice little ballad, reprising the opening from “Me and Sarah Jane” and with some really emotional keyboards from Banks, but it owes a lot of its melody structure to the likes of “In the Air Tonight” and “This Must Be Love”, so I see it as more a Phil Collins solo song than a Genesis one, while “Like It Or Not”, the only Mike Rutherford solo effort on the album, is another ballad, and indeed another standout, with its lovely drum roll opening, soft synths and Collins' vocal wistful and yearning, a great hook with a lovely fadeout ending. Why couldn't they have written more songs like this? It's almost out of place on this album.

The closer is total filler. If only they'd finished on “Like It Or Mot”, I could possibly have felt a little better about this album, but “Another Record”, although it starts off with promising synth and piano melody, turns out to be just totally forgettable, and like much of the album it fades out at the end, and the only really positive thing I can say about it is that it brings this stain on Genesis' long career to an end.

Thankfully, the next album, which they just titled Genesis, almost as if they were going back to basics, was far better (wouldn't be hard) and slid back towards the progressive rock they had built their career on, but the pop idea was never going to go away, and there are one or two on that album, which then led to Invisible Touch and then general decline for Genesis as a prog-rock band. Following the excellent We Can't Dance, the end was in sight, and there really was no way back.

TRACK LISTING

1. Abacab
2. No Reply At All
3. Me and Sarah Jane
4. Keep it Dark
5. Dodo/Lurker
6. Whodunnit?
7. Man On the Corner
8. Like It Or Not
9. Another Record

Rating: 5.0/10

10-20-2021, 12:03 PM	#21 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,970	Abacab (1981) Ah yes, the album that almost did for me with Genesis! After the sublime Duke, this was one hell of a bitter pill to swallow, and it's got Phil Collins' muddy handprints all over it. A huge shift of direction for Genesis, you can pinpoint this as the moment they stopped being a progressive rock - or even a rock - band, and succumbed entirely to pop and bland songs. I'm afraid that even forty years later I still have very little good to say about it. I hated it when it came out, and I only bought it because I'm a huge Genesis fan, but it grated on me. I played it through a few times, but never felt the urge to do so for pleasure; I just wanted to see if it got any better than the title track and lead single. It really doesn't. Well, that's not quite fair. There are a few good tracks on it. Well, no, not really. Let's say there are a few that are not as bad as the general low quality of music on the album, but there are probably about two songs I would listen to again, if I had to. Although the decision to change their style so radically was, according to Mike Rutherford, a group one, you can't help but feel that Phil had a huge input into what they eventually released: so much of Abacab is similar to the sort of pop pap he peddled, and continues to peddle, on his solo albums. It opens with the title track, and this was for me where it all began to go wrong. Okay, it has its prog moments, but generally this is driven by a very pop melody: it's fast, it's stripped-down, it's commercial. It's not the Genesis I had grown up with and loved. This was all right for the charts, but I don't want a full album of this! Sadly, I got my wish, but sort of would have preferred not to have. Far from all being songs like the title, much of the tracks on Abacab are far worse, many so bad in fact that they make the opener sound great, and that can't be good. I mean, the song doesn't even make any sense! ”When you wake in the morning/ Wake and find you're covered in cellophane/ There's a hole in there somewhere...” What? People say that Duke showcased a new Genesis, a move away from the longer, progressive compositions of their previous years, but I don't agree: I still think that was a great prog rock album, and while it may have yielded some of their bigger hit singles, I would not have ever considered it a pop album. After all, ...And Then There Were Three gave them their biggest hit ever, “Follow you follow me”, and no-one would accuse them of being pop on that album! But this is definitely pop. “No Reply At All” is a pure pop tune, which cosys up rather unsettlingly to Collins' “I Missed Again”. The addition of the horn section from Earth, Wind and Fire just, for me, pulls Genesis further off their usual course and takes them into territory which would be successfully trod by their frontman for the next few years, but which never suited his band. Things pick up a little in terms of song quality then for “Me and Sarah Jane”, one standout on an album which has few. Not surprisingly, it's helped achieve this status by being a song solely composed by Tony Banks, without any interference from Phil “I-have-a-solo-career-now” Collins, who seemed to think his direction for the band was the only one. Banks does his best to pull the ship hard-a-port and back towards their progressive roots with an atmospheric, tense and dramatic song which recalls the best of Duke, with soft percussion and breathy organ, the typical kind of Genesis lyric we've become used to, and expect, with some very nice understated guitar from Mike Rutherford. It's also one of the longer songs on the album, at six minutes exactly. Even the slightly reggae rhythm doesn't overshadow the power or melody of this song. There's even a synthy midsection that reminds me of “Eleventh Earl of Mar” from Wind and Wuthering, and for six minutes you can start to really believe that the first two tracks were just aberrations, that you may have to skip over them next time you spin the album, but that now at last Abacab is back on track, and all is well with the world. Unfortunately, that's far from the case, as “Keep It Dark” amply demonstrates, with its annoying squeaky synth (oh, Tony! How could you?) and although there's a rocky guitar line held by Rutherford, it's a pretty weak song which tries to tell a song of alien abduction but ends up getting a little lost along the way. It does inject a little of that old Genesis synth and keyboard sound, but when it reaches the chorus, which is disappointingly flat. Ah, let's be honest: it's not the worst track on the album (that's yet to come!) and I do have a sneaking place in my heart for the two-part “Dodo/Lurker”, which between them make up the longest track on the album at seven and a half minutes. Starting off with powerful synth and guitar, the song soon settles into a decent groove, Banks' keys again a little light and bubbly for my tastes, but not too annoying. Rutherford keeps the hard guitar line he's famous for while Collins sings about, well, the dodo. Actually, the song seems to be about man hunting creatures to extinction for profit. I think. Again, there's a reggae beat to at least the first part of the song, “Dodo”, exacerbated by Collins' infuriating attempts at singing in that vein, but Banks and Collins pull the song back on track, then “Lurker”, the second part, becomes a proper prog-rock monster, Banks' warbling keys working here where before they seemed so out of place, then replaced with heavy synth, sharp guitar from Rutherford holding the line. But that's it. We're now into the worst track on the album, and the worst Genesis song ever. The truly awful “Whodunnit” sounds like someone trying - unsuccessfully - to write their first song. It's really pathetic. Talk about simple. Big blasting drums and sliding bass under Collins' “inspired” lyric - ”Was it you, or was it me/ Was it he or was it she?” and the equally annoying chorus, if it can be called such, consisting of the words ”We know” repeated, then back to the verse, another chorus and then the drums crash into the ending, the whole thing falling away in a fading drop of pitch-bend as if even it has given up. I really can't say how much I hate this song: at three minutes twenty-three seconds it's exactly three minutes twenty-three seconds too long. Awful, just awful. How could one of my favourite bands have unleased this tripe on us? It gets a little better, though not that much. “Man On the Corner” is a nice little ballad, reprising the opening from “Me and Sarah Jane” and with some really emotional keyboards from Banks, but it owes a lot of its melody structure to the likes of “In the Air Tonight” and “This Must Be Love”, so I see it as more a Phil Collins solo song than a Genesis one, while “Like It Or Not”, the only Mike Rutherford solo effort on the album, is another ballad, and indeed another standout, with its lovely drum roll opening, soft synths and Collins' vocal wistful and yearning, a great hook with a lovely fadeout ending. Why couldn't they have written more songs like this? It's almost out of place on this album. The closer is total filler. If only they'd finished on “Like It Or Mot”, I could possibly have felt a little better about this album, but “Another Record”, although it starts off with promising synth and piano melody, turns out to be just totally forgettable, and like much of the album it fades out at the end, and the only really positive thing I can say about it is that it brings this stain on Genesis' long career to an end. Thankfully, the next album, which they just titled Genesis, almost as if they were going back to basics, was far better (wouldn't be hard) and slid back towards the progressive rock they had built their career on, but the pop idea was never going to go away, and there are one or two on that album, which then led to Invisible Touch and then general decline for Genesis as a prog-rock band. Following the excellent We Can't Dance, the end was in sight, and there really was no way back. TRACK LISTING 1. Abacab 2. No Reply At All 3. Me and Sarah Jane 4. Keep it Dark 5. Dodo/Lurker 6. Whodunnit? 7. Man On the Corner 8. Like It Or Not 9. Another Record Rating: 5.0/10 __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018