Genesis - Selling England By The Pound

Released - October 1973

Genre - Progressive Rock

Producer - Genesis & John Burns

Selected Personnel - Peter Gabriel (Vocals/Flute/Oboe/Percussion); Tony Banks (Piano/Organ/Mellotron/Synthesiser/Keyboards); Steve Hackett (Guitar); Mike Rutherford (Bass/Rhythm Guitar/Sitar); Phil Collins (Drums/Percussion/Vocals)

Standout Track - Firth Of Fifth

I detailed the importance of Selling England By The Pound in my review for Foxtrot - before I listened to it for the first time a few years ago, Genesis were one of the few major prog bands I had consistently resisted, being fairly certain I wouldn't like them (quite why I took up this self-consciously difficult stance is beyond me, considering how big a fan I was of most of their contemporaries). In my defence, I did eventually agree to listen to Nursery Cryme in 2011 and found it overly pompous and tuneless even by prog rock standards, and never warmed to it (which continues to this day. Perhaps one day I'll suddenly get it). I grudgingly agreed to give Genesis one more chance and listened to Selling England By The Pound and, while it didn't immediately blow me away, I was surprised to find that it intrigued me and that I wanted to listen to it again. Eventually, thanks purely to my initial appreciation of this album, I came to have some fondness for early Gabriel-era Genesis. They remain one of the few big prog bands I continue to have difficulty unreservedly loving, though my subsequent love of Gabriel's solo career would never have come about had I not developed an interest in his early work with the band. As for what happened to Genesis in the 80s, it barely bears talking about. Most prog bands had to morph into cheesy pop-rock stadium acts in order to survive into the next decade and some of them, like Yes, managed to do it right. Let's just say Genesis emerges from the 80s with perhaps one of the most tarnished records, at least from an artistic perspective, of any classic early 70s band, despite the enormous commercial success of their synthpop stuff.

But in 1973 such horrors were far off and the band were busy crafting what would be, in my opinion, their finest record. Stylistically it picks up pretty much exactly where Foxtrot left off and does little to radically alter the sonic palette or musical approach, although side-long epics like "Supper's Ready" have been consigned to the past, with a new focus on slightly more concise mini-epics (most of the songs on offer here are over eight minutes, but most of them manage to avoid the vague sense of bloating and sprawling that settles in on certain moments of "Supper's Ready.") In contrast to the portentous, dense Mellotron soundscapes that opened Foxtrot in the intro to "Watcher Of The Skies," here things start with beautiful simplicity in Peter Gabriel's a cappella sung intro to "Dancing With The Moonlit Knight," soon accompanied by a beautiful acoustic guitar riff from Steve Hackett. The song soon sprawls into an uptempo monster of a rock song, with Mike Rutherford's resounding bass and Tony Banks's grandiose keyboards propelling it to its final, quiet, haunting lullaby of a denouement. The lyrics are supposedly a meditation on the current state of Britain (as a response to accusations that Genesis were becoming too US-centric), though as with most Gabriel lyrics of the era, it's mostly just colourful imagery and nonsense. What's always appealed to me most about Genesis is that, while they lack the musical ferocity of King Crimson or the epic intricacy of Yes, they have such a zest and a tongue-in-cheek vivacity about them (principally through the theatrical bent of Gabriel himself), that they manage to overcome any shortcomings that the music itself may possess.

"I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)" is a perfectly decent song, but never one that's really engaged me much, and its enduring popularity remains a mystery to me. It's a little too kookily off-kilter for my liking and struggles to really find an engaging tune. It's followed up by perhaps the finest piece of music Genesis ever laid down, the magnificent "Firth Of Fifth" (its title another tongue-in-cheek joke, in reference to the Firth of Forth in Edinburgh. The meaning of the title is, as ever with Genesis, irrelevant). The epic and intricate grand piano intro is proud and magnificent and affects an amazing transition into the explosive organ swells of the song itself, over which comes Gabriel's declamatory vocals. After a pretty flute solo from Gabriel, the song expands from its ponderous intro to a raving behemoth as most great longer Genesis songs do, giving Hackett an opportunity for a particularly frenetic guitar solo, and Banks has great fun with the various keyboard effects at his disposal. "More Fool Me" shows the band demonstrating an uncharacteristic amount of restraint, with drummer Phil Collins (who, after Gabriel's departure, would go on to succeed him as lead vocalist) singing to a pretty and simple acoustic guitar accompaniment. It's a pleasant interlude between the grandiosity of "Firth Of Fifth" and the frantic mania of the next song.

"The Battle Of Epping Forest" starts with a slow, militaristic march but soon transforms into a fast-paced epic with Banks's organ again to the forefront and Rutherford laying down a nimble and acrobatic bass part. The main star, though, is Gabriel, who uses the song as an opportunity to indulge all his theatrical aspirations, shifting between a whole host of different voices, dialects and tones to tell a story ostensibly about gang warfare in East London, though again it's such a colourful and nonsensical piece of music that any attention being paid to the narrative rather than the general theatrical fun of the song is misplaced, really. The other epic on offer is "The Cinema Show," and perhaps is the only major letdown on the album. "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)" may be a little humdrum, but at least it's short, but "The Cinema Show" is altogether too long for how interesting it is to listen to and nudges this album into the "ever so slightly too long to be undeniably brilliant" territory. The album closes on the brief reprise of "Dancing With The Moonlit Knight" that is "Aisle Of Plenty" and sees Gabriel, ever the humourist, trying to namecheck as many supermarkets in one couplet as he can. ("Easy, love, there's the safe way home, thankful for her fine fair discount, Tess co-operates...")

As ever, one of the major things that sets Genesis apart from other (and, in my opinion, better) prog bands is their novel approach to using the lineup of instruments on offer. Whereas most rock music tended to be guitar-based and used keyboards as a sort of decorative or supporting instrument, Genesis's music seems consistently to be driven by organs or keyboards, with Hackett's guitar work mostly reserved to a more unobtrusive role and the odd solo or the like. That, plus the band's obvious sense of humour and theatricality, makes listening to Genesis feel different to listening to any old prog band, and keeps the attention from wavering in the moments when the actual songwriting dips below the usual standard. Still, on Selling England By The Pound, they mostly manage to make a really genuinely great album, that just suffers on account of a couple of its lesser tracks. It became the band's biggest success up to that point, with "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)" becoming a surprisingly successful single, and Genesis had successfully managed to join the ranks of Yes and Jethro Tull as one of the biggest and most promising prog bands of the era. Of course, prog's death knell wasn't far off and, like so many of its best bands, major things would happen in the next couple of years that set the band off on the path to becoming one of the most nauseously terrible 80s pop bands that we ever had the misfortune of having to listen to. They still had at least one more great album in them, though...

Track Listing:

All songs written by Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Steve Hackett, Peter Gabriel & Mike Rutherford

1. Dancing With The Moonlit Knight

2. I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)

3. Firth Of Fifth

4. More Fool Me

5. The Battle Of Epping Forest

6. After The Ordeal

7. The Cinema Show

8. Aisle Of Plenty