THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY

The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway is the last Genesis album with Peter Gabriel. People seem to have lots of different opinions about this album, one finds it too long with too much filler, and the other thinks the album is perfect because of the emotion and dramatics. I do partially agree with those opinions. Yes, the album is very long and lots of the songs seem to be on the album only to tell the progress of the story, instead of being there for the music. On the other hand, I think the story is pretty good, and the way Peter Gabriel expresses himself as main character Rael, and how he shows us the progress in the story is outstanding. This makes The Lamb a very hard album to rate. I won't be discussing the album song by song, cause quite a lot of the songs don't need to be discussed, as they are only on the album to tell the story's progress.

The album has only a few Genesis classics, those are songs like "In The Cage", "Back In N.Y.C.", "Colony Of Slipperman" and "The Lamia", the latter being a really amazing song. This is only a small part of the songs on the album, while previous albums, like Foxtrot and Selling England, had a much higher percent of those truly memorable Genesis songs. So, that's kind of dissapointing, but luckily the album has a lot more to offer. The biggest part of the album is made up of good songs, no excellent songs, but just good songs. Some of those songs are "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway", "Fly On A Windshield", "The Carpet Crawlers", "Anyway" and "The Light Dies Down On Broadway".

Unfortunately, The Lamb seems not to be able to carry the weight of the concept it has, so there is a lot of filler. Songs like "Cuckoo Cocoon", "The Grand Parade Of Lifeless Packaging", "Counting Out The Time" and "Riding The Scree" just don't do it for me, they are not all bad, but they should be much better as this is supposed to be a very epic album, and Foxtrot and Selling England showed what the band was able to.

The cocept of The Lamb also plays a big role at live performances, of course. Every Genesis fan knows that Peter Gabriel would quite often wear strange costumes on stage, and The Lamb is no exception. The costumes are more extreme than ever before, Gabriel having a rotating cone around him on "The Lamia", and crawling out of an inflatable while wearing the costume of a slipperman while singing "Colony Of Slippermen". On the other song gabriel was dressed up as Rael. Changing these Radical costumes takes a while, of course, so the album knows songs that give Peter Gabriel time to do that ("Silent Sorrow In Empty Boats", "The Supernatural Anaestethist"). I understand those songs have to be played live to give Peter time to change costumes, but why do they have to be on the album? They are the ultimate filler.

It's very hard do choose what rating I will give The Lamb... Should I rate it low because of the huge amount of filler and songs underneath the level of Genesis, or should I rate it high because of the great storyline and the several Genesis classics?

Because I am doubting too much between a very low and a very high rating, I'm going to take the middle path. Three stars for this extraordinary album.