Nominated by: Tom Kirkham
Music club: Monday Night Album Club
Highlight: Growing Up
A disclosure: I love proggy stuff and have quite a few Genesis albums filed away in the prog section at home. Twelve actually - I've just counted them, plus the first 5 Gabriel solo albums. So, yes, I quite like him and his group (with and without him).
But I must have lost interest during the lengthy times between albums post So. Which meant this is the first time I've heard Up (and I've yet to bother with Us or his other work post Up).
I really like bits of it, and have an okay reaction to the rest - nothing on there I didn't like, although the lyrics to Sky Blue are pretty ordinary and The Barry Williams Show is way too long at 7 plus minutes for a rant about TV talk shows. Just noticed that all of these songs hit the 6 plus minute mark - no issue with that with the other songs as they develop and resolve nicely.
Nice to hear the King Crimson influence on the opener (is that Robert Fripp on guitar?), and the Syd Barrett inflections are a nice nod to prog's antecedents on Growing Up.
Growing Up is my favourite, No Way Out and I Grieve are also in the great column (big fan of the idea that life is just a highway and the soul is just a car -Jim Steinman was deep maan).
The album does kind of tailor off a bit on side 2 with no great bits for me, or else I kinda lost some interest.
In summary - I'd rank his first five albums way ahead of Up but that's just because those 5 are exceptional!
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