WIND & WUTHERING

A poor follow up to the fantastic Trick of the Tail, the band seems unsure of its direction. The instrumental parts of this album are all incredible, but the vocal parts start to sound schmaltzy, with the exception of Blood on the Rooftops, a fantastic song. Even the epics, One for the Vine and Eleventh Earl of Mar, are disjointed and silly. They both have very sappy vocals from Phil, and Tony Banks uses his synthesizer far too much. it just sounds plain bad. what happened to the glorious days of piano and mellotron? he hardly uses those at all. The instrumental Unquiet Slumbers for the sleepers... ... in that Quiet Earth is just plain boring. Afterglow is very simple and stupid. All in a Mouse's night is a poor attempt at recreating the Gabriel era. Wot Gorilla? is a silly instrumental that does nothing for me, and Your Own Special Way is by far the worst song on the album. In attempting to fuse past glories with the new pop sound, Genesis have completely lost everything they had going for them, which is probably the reason Steve Hackett left after this album.