22 October : Trespass

Trespass is the second album by Genesis. Phil Collins isn’t with them yet, nor is Steve Hackett, but it is recognisably Genesis already.

I know there are Genesis fans who love this album, but I’m not a Genesis fan. That isn’t to say I don’t like them, and the only time I saw them was a great show, but I cherry pick what I listen to. My main feeling listening to this was that the strongest aspects are all down to Peter Gabriel. A couple of times I heard echoes of what would one day be Moribund the Burgomeister on his first album, just as there were a couple of passages that seemed to me to presage Selling England By The Pound, my favourite of the albums by their ‘classic’ lineup.

In fact, I found my thoughts drifting to how good this might have been as an early Gabriel solo album, with a lot less of Tony Banks’ keyboards.

If you are a fan of the classic Genesis sound, you’ll like this, but it didn’t do a lot for me. Except, that is, for the final track, The Knife, which is the best song on it by a long way. It’s a little histrionic for my taste, but obviously a significant developmental step for them.

I must add, though, that I have heard nothing else like this in the rest of the music I’ve listened to this year: they had a distinctive sound that set them apart from their contemporaries. Although I’m lukewarm about this album, they worked for, and deserved their success.