Passion vs Topographics vs Lamb

Tales over Lamb by a short head.

Went with Lamb on this one.

Yes

Three great albums. A Passion Play takes my vote.

This site is really a Yes fan club lol. Tull Crap on them

All 3 albums are overwrought and over thought......but still 3 great bands......and all 3 lp's are pretentious as someone already mentioned above.

Lewian wrote: My vote for Tull here as well. And again I'm not surprised they're losing.

Yeah this is the Yes and Genesis fan club after all lol.

Tales from Topographic Oceans may be overlong, and the only song I really love on the album is The Revealing Science of God... but that one is better than anything on the other two albums for me... so Tales.

I'm with the minority here.

Lamb is good. Not an automatic rotation album, but in the upper 50 percentile of my collection.

A Passion Play is my favorite Tull and probably in my top 10 of the classic era.

Tales I find absolutely dreadful at this point, except for the artwork.

So it's not that easy.

Admittedly, A Passion Play remains a somewhat uncharted territory for me. Well, I gave it a dozen spins last couple of years, but perhaps it isn't enough to truly understand and catch what's going on there. Or is it? I remember it was always the least listened-to and talked-about Jethro album in our house, my father felt rather indifferent about it. I can see why: musical passages are often quirky, hard to follow, and some of them rather "unmelodic". There are strong sections for sure, like Memory Bank, Overseer Overture or refreshing Magus Perde... I adore Forest Dance, especially how it comes back to life after Spectacles Story. The main theme of "Fulham Road" is always catchy, I really enjoy The Silver Cord where it's introduced for the first time. I could think of more highlights, but in the end it's no more than 50% of running time. What about the other half? As I said, it's not outright bad, but it doesn't sit very well with me, definitely Thick As a Brick has a much better flow.

Tales from Topographic Oceans is such an ambitious project, I really WISH I loved this album. Such a broad scope, monolithic album cover, the title itself promises such a deep and unparalleled musical adventure... Yet it has its flows. Most of the tracks are a tad too long - I believe Rick Wakeman that the band stretched it out to fill 2 LPs, you can definitely hear some plodding here and there. Compositions aren't as tight and focused as Close to the Edge or Relayer ones. The exception is The Revealing Science of God, which I consider a truly moving masterpiece, almost on par with greatest Yes songs, engaging listener all the way through. The rest have some drawbacks, unfortunately - I tend to lose interest at times. I might change my opinion in the future after another hundred listens... because I'd love to buy the hype, for real.

I think that The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is the easiest to get into and probably the most enjoyable. Although it's much longer than other two, it consists mostly of short compositions, most of them having their own identity, breathing their own life. Of course it also suffers from missteps and some plain, unmemorable moments (I'm not entirely sold on In the Cage or The Colony of Slippermen), but majority of the album is a pure WIN. Those ~5 min songs strike home consistently, be it the opening track, Back in N.Y.C., Carpet Crawlers or The Waiting Room. The Lamia is definitely the greatest piece here, equal to anything that came before (perhaps the only song reaching those heights). I love closing ~15 minutes of the album, entire run between Ravine and It - very emotional and uplifting. So yes, I consider Lamb the best of the three, although it's not my favorite Genesis effort - I prefer Dickensian atmosphere of past albums... not to mention their compositional superiority. 

All 3 deserve repeated listens.