THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY

First - 2 salient points. One - I love Gabriel era Genesis, 2 - I believe that most studio double albums contain some padding that diminishes album quality. Two key exceptions to the double album rule are Tommy and Quadrophenia by the Who, among a few others.

Having loved Genesis's 3 previous studio efforts I was excited when I bought this on vinyl on the day of its release. On first play I was left a bit cold but felt I needed to give it a few plays, as with most Genesis stuff, to appreciate its subtleties. Dozens of plays later and I still don't get it.

Fine, there are few good pieces (Fly on a Windshield, In the Cage, Carpet Crawlers, Riding the Scree..) but the majority of tracks still give me the feeling of padding out to make a double album out of a decent single album.

It's not that there weren't songs on previous albums that didn't strike a chord with me (e.g You Know What I Like on SEBTP) but the previous albums gave me a feeling that pretty much every track was a worthy listen. I'm afraid I find it difficult to sit all through a play of The Lamb as so many tracks don't match up to the quality of earlier stuff.

Instead I find myself selecting a few tracks from the whole though I do also play some of the padding from time to time, still without "getting it".

I agree with the ratings given to their previous output but this is only a mere 3 stars for me. Thankfully, their next 3 efforts made a good recovery, especially "WaW" before their prog decline started.