FOXTROT

I have reviewed SEBTP - My favourite Genesis album, now it's another fabulous effort from the band that sparked my love of prog in the mid to late 70's. I have heard this album hundreds of times - and it;s not aged IMO. Suppers Ready - the track that is the epitome of the Symphonic prog genre. It has been copied many times by later prog bands who have been heavily influenced by this masterpiece. I still love the lights down low and listen to the twelve strings as Gabriel relates the strangeness of his girlfriend on the fateful night he describes, I love the ambience he sets as I umagine him & Jill settling down in some large home-counties house, the metronome click of some grand-father clock *Nursery cryme imagery" as the distant sounds of the modern world (motor cars) are fading to be replaced by the horror-genre girlfriend face-change...The song takes me back to the 70's - and it;s brilliance evolves into gast-flowing organ and guitar interchanges - the quirky willow-farm, the haunting Hackett guitar and then the finale with it's religious pomposity that echoes throughout the ages and is still revered by the modern prog world. What about the opener - Watcher of the skies? - again this is a much copied track - and the Mellotron & Organ still makes me tingle to this day. Can Utility and the coastliners - another UNDERATED classic - sort of a compacted epic, and these three tracks take Foxtrot easily into FIVE STARS - Get em out by friday has interesting historical and social overtones and Gabriel sees the future quite clearly - The Piano ballad Time-Table isn't bad and Horizons is one of my favourite classical guitar mini-solos. A true classic and I may listen tonight as I've whetted my own appetite to revisit 1972.