FOXTROT

I can't believe Genesis didn't have a synthesisier by 1972. The most appealing quality of Genesis' music is their amazing instrumental music. This album, from 1972, called Foxtrot, is one of the least appealing in that regard.

I mean you have the intro into "Watcher of the skies", that wonderful mellotron solo from Tony Banks. This music is reprised in the outro. The song itself is a nicely paced "rocker", with some interesting lyrics and a good beat. The other really good song on this album is the 20+ minute opus "Supper's ready" which is also a grand achievement, it features a fair amount of interesting instrumental music but was still a brilliant effort to go for twenty minutes. That siad my personal favourite song from the album stands as "Watcher of the skies".

The other three songs are not bad at all, just a little on the average side. "Get em out by Friday" sounds great at first, but after a while it becomes clear this song is a knock off of "Return of the giant hogweed" from Nursery Crymes. Still, it's a worthwhile as it's quite a catchy song, though the instrumental bit is a bit weak, and near the end the song meanders without being interesting. The other two songs are competent ballads, with a nice medieval feeling coming through, but they fall short of brilliance.

That said, the production on this album is good, and Peter Gabriel's singing is good and his voice is fitted properly into the music, so it's easy to understand what is being said. The instrumental passages on this album do fail to inspire, to a degree, and not every song is a masterpiece, so I have taken the liberty to remove two stars from the rating, making it a good album. It is an essential album to collect for any prog fan, due to it's place in history. That said it isn't the most amazing Genesis albums, well it wasn't for me, but if I could, I would give it 3.5/5.0. It is definitely worth that much.