Genesis
Foxtrot

THE REVIEW

Foxtrot
After the critical and (partially) public success of Nursery Cryme, Genesis attempt the big hit with a new album, released a year after the previous one: Foxtrot. Even though at first glance this album seems to have been created to build a commercial trend following the success of Nursery Cryme, in reality, things are different... many critics have defined this LP as the consequence of Nursery Cryme, but in reality, you will understand that these two LPs are very different...

The album opens with "Watcher Of The Skies," which begins with Banks' mellotron and then transitions into a rock-driven song where Hackett's electric guitar is very prominent, and how! The opening song of their concerts, "Watcher of The Skies" is followed by a song, "Time Table," damnably simple and obvious but damnably sweet and beautiful, even though I repeat, it's not creatively exceptional. But you know, the simple things are often the most beautiful. From the ballad, we move to irony with "Get'em Out By Friday," a song with a perhaps bizarre theme, the invasion of aliens on earth, but undoubtedly fascinating. Musically, the song oscillates on highs and lows, on baroque strumming by the Banks/Rutherford/Hackett trio, accompanied by Collins and Gabriel's voice, and on very original narrated pieces, but they often break the harmony of the song. And this is one of the weaknesses of the entire album; the changes are indeed veeeeery rushed, and they don't always harmonize with the subsequent part. Here we are at another very underrated song: "Can-Utility & The Coastliners," the most glaring example of rushed rhythm changes, which here echo and re-echo in a melody that in some phases surprises (always thanks to Banks) while for the rest remains in the so-called "beautiful, but not perfect"!

Then on side B, we find ONLY two songs! Some of you may be wondering: "What, only two songs?" Yes, but let's proceed in order. The first is barely a minute and a half long, but the song is not scarce, though there is better. We're talking about "Horizons," an instrumental track that moves (almost like a snail, it must be said) on Hackett's strings, giving us a beautiful song but without too many pretensions. Pretensions that are completely met in the last track: "Supper's Ready," a chameleonic 23-minute suite with changing and often magnificent rhythms, see "Apocalypse in 9/8," a piece created in collaboration with Gabble Ratchet, "The Willow Farm," maximum level irony but also with much genius, and the final part "As Sure As Eggs Is Eggs (Aching Men's Feet)," with the liberation of Jerusalem. In short, "Supper's Ready" is perhaps the highest expression of Genesis' creativity, with a suite that ranks among the legendary suites of that era (including "Tarkus" by ELP).

And so concludes a magnificent album, which, however, compared to the previous and the following album, Selling England By The Pound, reveals a more accurate quest for simplicity compared to the baroque and magnificence of the other albums of the Gabriel era. And just as I said earlier, the rule of the simple song also applies to the album, which only loses the comparison to its majesty Selling England By The Pound, but wins the comparison with all the others. If you love Genesis and don't have this album, buy it immediately, and to the others, I advise reconsidering it, and to those who haven't... if you want to try something new and want to explore the progressive scene, Foxtrot might be the beginning of it all!