I may have been trying to sell the album a bit in my quoted comment above. I'm really torn about Selling England By The Pound. Because it's such a classic, I've given it chance after chance over the last few years and I know much of it by heart now. Still, while I think some of the songs are very good, I fail to connect with the album as a whole.
My favourite song here is Fifth of Firth. I just love everything about it, it's brilliant, the piano, the guitar solo .. dissecting it, everything here sounds good. I'm also very fond of Dancing with the Moonlit Knight and the album's hit, I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe). Aside from the musicality, there are some very clever lyrics on the album.
However, I'm also having trouble with parts of the album, particularly songs like The Cinema Show or The Battle of Epping Forest. The first of these is touchey feely and the latter is whimsical and silly with Gabriel doing voices and characters. My problem is I don't think Peter Gabriel manages to do either in a way that I think is charming at all. His voice is slightly grating and on tracks like these, I feel Genesis just reaches some level of pretentiousness that I find hard to like.
It makes it very hard for me to rank the album because I either love it or I don't like it, but the fact is I do return to it ever so often. It would land somewhere between a good and very good, I think. Those who have visited progarchives may have registered that this album was for a long time knifing with Yes' Close to the Edge for the position of #1 prog album ever made. For me, it's as clear as a sunny day. The moments of brilliance on Selling England, while very nice, do not come close to the beauty and musical genius of Close to the Edge!
|