Oh, I keep saying that Phil Collins as a solo artist started off well, with two nice albums of that pop-fusion-blue eyed soul-r&b that he loves so much, being a born entertainer. This first album is one of the thousand faces of Collins (in the same 1981 there was also “Abacab,” but during that time there were also Brand X, the collaboration with John Martyn, in short, the usual one, none, and a hundred thousand) and especially the first half I must say is a little gem, with at the top that standout track “In the Air Tonight,” of course; there are the ideas, like bringing back the dry drumming without cymbals due to the experience from the year before with Peter in “III-Melt.” The ballads/slow songs are sometimes really nice and other times they are a bit of a Collins whine but 10 times more enjoyable than the Collins whines that will come later. From the “marital crisis” sessions of '79-'80 came out some beautiful pieces, there’s groove here, a great rhythm section (there’s the buddy John Giblin, just to mention, you know...) a singer at the peak of maturity and expressiveness, a musician who hadn’t yet forgotten how to be one. Of course, in the second half it drops a bit but remains pleasant overall. And anyway, it's quite obvious that he reserved the leftovers of his own songs for Genesis, just think of “No Reply at All” on the contemporary “Abacab.”
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