A TRICK OF THE TAIL

After the departure of Peter Gabriel Genesis had to prove they could still cut it without their charismatic frontman. Not only did they prove they could, but A Trick Of The Tail for me is a superior album to their last to feature Gabriel, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. The Lamb, due to Gabriel's insistence to write all the lyrics and plenty of them there were too, left little room for musical manoeuvres thus it lacked the longer tracks with all the excellent instrumental interludes that the band did so well. While A Trick Of The Tail contains 8 roughly equal length (give or take a couple of minutes) tracks it offered far more scope for Genesis to display their musical chops and thus bears more resemblance to the likes of Selling England By The Pound than The Lamb.

It's a beautiful warm sounding album containing some of the bands most sublime moments with Entangled, Mad Man Moon and best of all Ripples which even my wife who hates Prog likes. While these more subdued pieces are all lovely songs the band also find time for their more explosive and dynamic moments. Dance On A Volcano is a fantastic opener, the scene being set by chiming twelve strings before the track explodes into life. Squonk is as near as Genesis had yet got to a straight forward rock song with it's simple John Bonham influenced rhythm from Phil Collins on drums. Robbery, Assault and Battery is a cousin of Harold The Barrel from Nursery Cryme with a short but superb instrumental section. The title track, while being the weakest song on the album is pleasant enough and the album closes with the blistering Los Endos, a stunning instrumental which in parts revisits themes visited earlier on the record. Such is the bands faith in it that it remained in their live set for the rest of their career.

A fantastic album then, despite the fact that guitarist Steve Hackett does not feature as much as he could, no doubt in part down to the fact that he didn't have a lot of ideas to bring to the table, having used them all up on his first solo album, Voyage Of The Acolyte. Nevertheless it remains an essential seventies symphonic prog album that any fan of the genre will surely enjoy.