Label: Virgin Records (Japan), VJCP-3209
Style: Pop, Rock
Country: Godalming, Surrey, England
Time: 51:11
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 292 Mb
Following
the identity-sealing statement that was Nursery Cryme, Genesis were now
intent on capitalising on their momentum. They continued to play every
college gig going while writing song suites about godlike entities
overseeing our destiny and dressing like a fox on stage. An average life
for a mid-level band in the UK in 1972, then.
They’d fully
incorporated the blast of a Mellotron into their sound and Phil Collins
jazz leanings were pushing them in a slightly more interesting
direction, away from the ponderous prog nonentity that awaited
contemporaries like Gentle Giant. What’s more their live sound had
become bolstered by the addition of Mike Rutherford’s bass pedals,
allowing him to add yet more ringing twelve string into the mix while
blasting the front three rows with his feet. Opener “Watcher Of the
Skies”, with its tricky time signatures, displays this power to the max.
What
follows is a consolidation of the promise shown on Nursery Cryme. The
first big difference is the production, which suddenly brings all that
chiming acoustic filigree up close and personal. The songs flow easily
and the cod-historical tendency is toned down in favour of science
fiction (“Watcher…”), an ill-judged ‘contemporary issues’ song (“Get ‘Em
Out By Friday”) and biblical allegory (“Supper’s Ready”). You do still
get the history-as-moral song with “Timetable” and one more which, for
no good reason at all apart from the awful pun contained in the title,
is about King Canute: “Can-Utility And The Coastliners”.
But the
really big stuff on Foxtrot resides in their first bona fide
masterpiece: The side-long epic, “Supper’s Ready”. These days Peter
Gabriel himself probably couldn’t tell you exactly what the whole
thing’s about, but it involves more puns, the Book of Revelations,
atomic war and flowers. Someone probably has a webpage explaining it
all…But never mind, for it’s an exhilarating, if slightly lumpy ride
through some of the band’s best writing and playing. The best sections
include the multi-voiced romp through insanity of “Willow Farm” and the
clever-cloggery of “Apocalypse in 9/8 (co-starring the delicious talents
of Gabble Ratchet)”. Guess which time signature that was in…
It
allowed Gabriel to do even more dressing up, making their shows the
hottest tickets in town. Unfortunately the album still stalled on the
brink of the big league which contained proggers like Yes and Crimson.
Genesis just needed one little extra push. And their next album would
supply that. But with Foxtrot everyone had begun to take notice.
(bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/68dp/)
01. Watcher Of The Skies (07:23)
02. Time Table (04:47)
03. Get 'Em Out by Friday (08:37)
04. Can-Utility And The Coastliners (05:45)
05. Horizon's (01:41)
06. Supper's Ready (22:56)
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