- The Musical Box
- For Absent Friends>
- The Return of Giant Hogweed
- Seven Stones
- Harold the Barrel
- Harlequin
- The Fountain of Salmacis
The Musical Box
In a master stroke Gabriel enters this song as if it has already started, and we the listeners are arriving late during his performance. The whole piece is full of repressed sexuality and violence and Gabriel toys with the lyrics with fastidious fascination. The most simple lines about 'Old King Cole', are rendered chilling, and phrases like "and the nurse will tell you lies", leap out from a numery room drama that builds up in tidal waves of manic energy. Although Tony Banks would later state that this album was similar to 'Trespass', the presence of the two newcomers is immediately obvious. Phil Collins brings a whole new dimension with his dynamic percussive playing, pushing the band with relentless drive and rock solid sense of time. Even during the quiet passages, you can hear his sticks rattling off closed hi-hat patterns that are far slicker than anything his predecessors could manage. Peter brings astonishing sensuality to his pronouncement of the keyword "flesh" before embarking on an orgy of shouting from the rooftops, "Why don't you touch me, now, now, NOW!" The band returns, with Steve Hackett's guitar well to the foreground, providing the first real competition for the keyboards. Together they create a power in the ranks unimaginable only a few months before. The guitar whips up manic sounds and Phil flies as they reach a crescendo and staccato coda that must have left them all amazed and breathless. It might still make you want to stand up and cheer this track, 25 years after its creation.
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For the Absent Friends
>In the midst of some pretty strong and violent musical overtures, this is a pleasing interlude in which Phil Collins makes a distinguished vocal debut. The rest of the band drop out, leaving the 12-string guitarists of the band (which included Banks, Rutherford and Hackett), to strum and pick behind Phil's touching vocals. The song is a brief, unfussy observation about a pair of widows attending church and thinking melancholy thoughts of loved ones lost. A nice touch that allows a reflective moment before the onslaught to come.
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The Return of the Giant Hogweed
A fine piece of what is called 'programme music' in classical circles, encapsulating both Genesis' dark humour and love of story telling. The idea was based on the true case of the invasion of England by giant stinging weeds that grabbed newspaper headlines in the early Seventies. It was a perfect subject which encouraged Gabriel to devise some suitably comic lyrics. As the band lash out amidst a dense foliage of rhythm, Gabriel hacks away in his best declaiming style, telling how a Victorian explorer brought the pesky weeds back to the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, where their seeds spread, "threatening the human race". Gabriel has some pretty tricky lines to negotiate, including "They all need the sun to photosensitise their venom", and "still they're immune to all our herbicidal battering ". However, he takes delight in skipping around this lugubrious tale, while the band cut loose with some jazzy unison flute and guitar, dancing over flawless drumming. Phil flips casually from swing to a marching beat, and there is a pause for some balletic piano before the final menacing crescendo from the entire cast. Collins' cymbals slash scythe-like at the organic growths all around him, but there is no hope. The Giant Hogweed lives.
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Seven Stones
An old man makes his reappearance in Genesis lore, this time revealing to the world his profound belief that the secret of success and good fortune is based purely on random events and chance. A Mellotron looms eerily over proceedings, adding to the gloom. Tony Banks was one of the pioneer users of this now obsolete instrument, which employed pre-recorded tapes to emulate the sound of an orchestra. A strangely mournful and inconclusive piece.
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Harold the Barrel
Twinkling acoustic guitars retum to support vocal harmonies that are closer in spirit to Crosby, Stills & Nash than British progressive rock. A good example of the way Genesis music could bend and flow without recourse to ceaseless battering. No drums, no blasting lead guitar, just a steady, almost dainty rhythm to support a picturesque, poetic theme.
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Harlequin
Twinkling acoustic guitars retum to support vocal harmonies that are closer in spirit to Crosby, Stills & Nash than British progressive rock. A good example of the way Genesis music could bend and flow without recourse to ceaseless battering. No drums, no blasting lead guitar, just a steady, almost dainty rhythm to support a picturesque, poetic theme.
The Fountain of Salmacis
On an album that sparkles with great dramatic achievements, 'Musical Box,' 'The Retum Of The Giant Hogweed,' and ' Harold The Barrel,' it was fitting that the band should attempt to cap it ail with a major, extended piece. This has particularly good production, with special emphasis placed on surging power chords from a band that played like an orchestra. However, the vocals are a bit lost at times, and this tale of Hermaphroditus and his encounter with the wood nymph Salmacis and his/her subsequent curse upon the waters, is perhaps too elaborate to be instantly compelling. Yet it is a piece that repays frequent listening and Steve Hackett contributes some dominant guitar themes that cut through the convoluted arrangement. Collins' drums sound strangely 'tubby" at times, possibly as a result of using beaters instead of sticks, but as the whole piece surges towards a majestic conclusion, this miniature overture shows astonishing sophistication. It remains an impressive example of collective achievement few rock bands could equal then, or now.
