FOXTROT

Audio channel 9 (Classic Albums) on British Airways flights this month features this album. It's good to know that someone at BA has good taste! The brief description in the in-flight magazine points out that this album was the first to chart for GENESIS and the album that brought the band into the limelight.

I remember lying on my bed listening to 'Supper's Ready' for the first time in 1972, especially the train whistle followed by "All change!", and thinking this stuff was marvellous. And I still do today. To me, this album is quintessential and, if I had to choose but one album to play to someone to illustrate the genre, this would be it.

Unfortunately I'm not a fan of GENESIS, and certainly not post-Gabriel GENESIS. I do like a few of the songs on other GENESIS albums, songs such as 'The Musical Box', 'I Know What I like' and 'Lilywhite Lilith' (well, even 'Ripples' is not too bad!). So I suppose it's strange in a way that I fell for "Foxtrot". To me, though, it's a whole quantum above the rest of the band's work. For thirty years none of the people I met who knew of, or were fans of, GENESIS rated the album ("Selling England By The Pound" seemed to be a favourite) and I just could not understand why "Foxtrot" was neglected: was I so out of sync? Then, to my relief, some ten months ago I discovered this Web site and saw that "Foxtrot" is not only considered the top GENESIS album, but also one of the top albums of the genre.

When I decided about eight years ago to start buying CDs to replace my long lost Progressive Rock LPs "Foxtrot" was, if memory serves, the very first CD I bought. If you are new to the genre or to the band, I strongly recommend that you do the same. I'm not going to review the tracks in depth because so many other reviews on this site cover them already, but I will say that the music itself is full of subtleties and twists and extremely pleasing, the poetic lyrics bizarre and fascinating, Gabriel's rendering passionate and captivating, and the band's playing top-notch. This is symphonic Progressive Rock at its best. People tend to focus on the 23-minute 'Supper's Ready' but I thoroughly enjoy all of the tracks on the album - they're all excellent. I have read criticism of the album's sound quality on several occasions but the 1994 remastered CD on my HI-FI sounds fine to these ears. An absolutely essential album for fans of the genre. If you haven't got it, what are you waiting for?!