THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY

This is by no means the best Genesis album, or even one of their best. Its a decent well balanced album that features some great keyboards and some great vocals and lyrics. Normally, I could care less about lyrics, but they are very creative on this album and weave a tale as well as any book could. The album tells a very strange tale about Rael, a young gang member of some sort. However, about halfway through the first album, the concept gets somewhat lost. I fail to recognize how Rael gets from point A to point B, he just kind of shows up there without any reasoning.

There are some points on the album where Gabriel's vocals are almost unbearable. He starts screeching at points and its rather painful. And then there are other parts where he sounds better than ever. Very inconsistant.

The song Back in NYC is the most inconsistant out of all the songs. Starts of with alot of unmemorable singing and melodies, then gets screechy. If the volume is up, it sounds alot like a nail on a chalkboard. Sends goosebumps up your spine and makes your whole body shudder. Then right after that, there is a cool vocal distortion effect used on some really interesting lyrics that are quite bizzare. "As I cuddled the porcupine, he said I had none to blame but me. Held my heart deep in hair. Time to shave, shave it off." It's way out there and makes no sense but it sure sounds cool in the song. I absolutely love the effect used on the vocals. Its so cool. The next song Hairless Heart is a beautiful melody that is soft and quiet. Its delightful to listen too, but the volume is so low that its almost impossible to listen to.

The album has some decent songs, a few gems, and alot of forgetable material. Usually Genesis was a great band that took ideas from every member and mixed them together. This album is all about Peter Gabriel. There is little input from the other members of the band and its almost entirely Peter singing. Nowhere near enough input from the rest of the band. Its just shoved away in the background so you have to really concentrate to hear and enjoy it.

I reccomend this to any Peter Gabriel fans, and of course any Genesis fan should own this, but if your not a big fan of the band, its safe to skip this one. This is certinely a good album, but its terrible by the band's usual standards. I think if any band other than Genesis put this album out, I would give it 4 stars, but they could do so much better, and they did do so much better. Skip this album and get either Selling England By The Pound, Foxtrot, or Nursery Cryme. They are much better.

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