SELLING ENGLAND BY THE POUND

Certainly in my top 5 prog albums of all time! This is one of the first prog albums I listened to, and I love it more every time I listen to it. My favourite Genesis album (though Foxtrot isn't far behind). The highlight of the album is "The Cinema Show", with beautiful 12-string guitar and a long but great synthesizer solo. Phil Collins does a great drumming on this song, it can be quite subtle, but the quiet drum rolls throughout the song really add to the feel of the song. Probably the best song by Genesis. But thankfully it's not the only good song on the album. "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight" builds up from a soft a cappella intro to an intense guitar solo and "Firth of Fifth" has a great piano intro and a beautiful guitar solo. It took me a long to appreciate how great this guitar solo is! It's not the typical extremely fast guitar solo associated with hard rock music, but instead a slow and melodic solo. "After the Ordeal" is a great instrumental that has the same British feel to it as the rest of the album. I personally think this song is a very underrated one! "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)" has a surprisingly simple chorus-verse pattern, but with the narration at the beginning and end, the lawnmower noise, and the sitar, this song is certainly not the average pop song. The other three songs ads little bit weaker for me, but are still excellent and by no means prevent this album from being a masterpiece. I think "The Battle of Epping Forest" could have been a little shorter, but the lyrics are very interesting to listen to. Peter Gabriel's classic story-telling! The album cover isn't quite as interesting as the Paul Whitehead ones, but it matches the mood of the album perfectly.

Highly Recommended! A great album to start off with if you've never listened to Genesis before (or at least Genesis with Peter Gabriel as lead singer).