Steve Hackett - Genesis Revisited II

I'm a Hackett fan but I'm not excited by this idea (nor the first "revisited" album). It sounds like a tribute band aiming to be as close to the original as possible . The singing is too anonymously representative and safely "tribute" oriented, and I don't like what I believe is the frequent use of auto-tune, because many vocal notes are perfectly straight in a way that doesn't sound natural.

I like it a lot, but don't love it - I prefer Watcher Of The Skies: Genesis Revisited. The problem with doing covers rather than versions or re-interpretations is everything now hangs on the vocalist especially when the music is a re-recording of the original arrangments. That means the main thing you have to compare is the original and new vocalists, and that's comparing people (however good they are) to Gabriel and Collins which is a always going to be a toughie. Revisisted I worked because everything was re-done so the new arrangement of the music now fitted the new singers, the need to compare say Colin Blunstone with Phil Collins never arose (for me anyway).

A link to a podcast interview.

Thanks for both of these. Precious.

I got this album over a month ago, and I actually enjoyed it very much. I must say that I was never much of a fan of Gabriel's singing, so the change of vocalist didn't bother me. As a matter of fact, I was looking forward to it. And I must say in many cases I did find it an upgrade from the originals. Perhaps the most notable case for me was Can-Utility, in which I found the original vocals rather painful, and now it sounds delightful, and in general the song flows much nicer... I was surprised to find that it was Steven Wilson singing there, it would seem he is able to do much more than he has showed us with Porcupine Tree and his solo albums, I think he should make better use of his voice in his own projects. I also liked The Lamia very much, and that bit of extended guitar solo at the end seems to be just what the song lacked for my apreciating it better (plus getting some not so rough new singing). Another song I actually enjoyed with it's new singer was "Musical Box", but I guess now I'm bordering on heresy here    Now, the song I was a bit disapointed about was Supper's Ready. Of course, the playing is flawless, but I don't think getting so many singers was the best idea, and I found that many times they got a stronger singer (Akerfeldt, I think) singing the softer parts, and the stronger parts were sung more softly than it would have benefited them; I would have liked this one sung by Akerfeldt and Steven Wilson mainly, Wilson singing the softer parts and Akerfeldt the stronger more emotional ones, I think that would have worked wonderfully, and the middle "funny" section left just as it was (I think here it was sung by Hackett himself, and I think he just nailed it, unlike other live versions I've heard played by Genesis themselves, where they just destroyed that part).

Some other songs I might like to discuss, Dancing with the Moonlit Knight I did find a bit lacking, specially comparing it with the live version from Live at the rainbow, where the band was really on fire, specially Collins drumming, and I actually rather liked Gabriel's Sheepy singing. And Shadow of the Hierophant also kind of lacks something, which I can't quiet describe; the performance is great, perhaps I should say better than the original, and the guitar is much clearer, but something of the mood was lost, something eery. The singing on the new one was nice too, but once again, there was kind of somethin speciall about the frail voice of Sally Oldfield. Now, I hope a good new live album or DVD may come out for our delight.