Progressive rock usually comes in two flavors: overblown or
\nsublime. If you’re lucky, the album turns out to be the latter.
\nHowever
\nTrespass<\/i> is in a whole different situation: completely
\nindispensable.<\/p>\n
Genesis has always crafted albums that sound good. Their
\nmusicianship has never been in question; from what I’ve heard from
\nthe band that much can be said.
\nTrespass<\/i> is their second album, following the learning
\nexperience that was
\nFrom Genesis To Revelation<\/i>. While this work is an
\nimprovement to be sure, it lacks the cohesiveness and genius of
\nlater albums such as
\nSelling England By The Pound<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Too often, and this goes for bands from Floyd to Yes, the
\nconcept of prog rock goes as follows: noodle aimlessly for a few
\nminutes without really going anywhere.
\nTrespass<\/i> unfortunately decides to go down that road, and
\nthat’s what really hurts the music. For example, did the band
\nreally think that having the music in “White Mountain” at one point
\nfade out between speakers was really that earth-shattering? What
\nthat is, is merely Genesis trying to sound “artistic” because they
\ncould.<\/p>\n
Minor gems can be found amongst the “jam sessions” that are
\nTrespass<\/i>. For starters, this particular unit of the band,
\nwhich included founders Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, and Michael
\nRutherford, along with Anthony Phillips and John Mayhew, showcase
\nsome very good harmonies on tracks like “Visions Of Angels.” The
\nharmonies make up for Gabriel’s mostly average performance; it
\nleads one to ponder whether he was still experimenting with his own
\nparticular vocal sound. While I trashed some of “White Mountain”
\nearlier, the opening and closing bits set a wonderfully dark mood,
\nreminding me of music from a Rankin-Bass movie (there’s your
\nobscure movie reference for the day).<\/p>\n
To hear a song that’s roughly four minutes from a band such as
\nGenesis (at least in the early years) is a surprise, but here they
\npull it off wonderfully. “Dusk” is a concise, acoustic- and
\nvocal-driven experience, with a little bit of Jethro Tull thrown
\nin. The result: the second best song on the album. The top honor
\nfalls to “The Knife.” Now this is a tremendous showing of prog
\nrock. A sense of urgency pervades the opening minutes, after which
\nthey pull a Yes-like trick, and slow things down with a few ambient
\nnoises and flute exclamations. From that point on it’s a slow and
\nprogressively more intense build up back to a furious reprise of
\nthe opening refrain. Damn it, I wish the whole album had been like
\nthis.<\/p>\n
It all comes down to trimming the fat when you talk about an
\nalbum like
\nTrespass<\/i>. Now, you may say, “Jeff, this is progressive rock,
\nthe whole point is not to trim songs down.” That is patently
\nabsurd. There are plenty of examples of prog albums and songs that
\nare say 20 minutes, but just as tight as “The Knife” or “Dusk” is
\nhere. On the other hand, yes there are also countless examples of
\nover blown monstrosities littering the progressive landscape. My
\npoint is,
\nTrespass<\/i> needs a sense of direction and purpose, something
\nthe band’s future albums would have. It just had not happened for
\nGenesis at this point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":25198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5883],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-38352","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-genesis","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38352"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}