Stop Talking

It just starts. This was a fact I had long since forgotten by the time I put my headphones on. I was blissfully unaware of the impending thermonuclear explosion as I turned up my iPod to full volume, and my equalization to “bass booster”. I lay down on my favorite couch, adjusted myself until I felt just right, and gently closed my eyes, all in order to maximize my listening experience. Silence filled the room as my finger floated toward the play button on the dirty, aged screen.

No build up, no warning; it was as if someone detonated a pipe bomb centimeters away from my ears while an all cymbal funk band enter full crescendo in the background. I immediately sprang up, almost falling off my couch in the process. In that moment I felt betrayed by one of my favorite bands, and I could almost see them collectively raise their right hands and extend the body that lies between the index and ring fingers right in my face. After collecting myself I paused the song, lowered the volume a smidge, and restarted my journey into Genesis’s 11th studio album Abacab.

Like the violent beginning of its opening track, Abacab was the embodiment of progressive rock’s violent death to many fans at that that time. In fact, the early eighties as a whole were a bit of a troubling time for the once mighty prog bands of the seventies. Gone were the days of high concept material and thirty eight minute long songs. Loyal fans of these once great musical machines watched on in horror as their favorite groups began producing poppy hits for the unworthy, mouth – breathing plebs.

Genesis was probably the biggest offender, with each subsequent album following front man Peter Gabriel’s departure becoming more and more poppy. Hardcore Genesis fans despise this era of the band, and many sight Abacab as the band’s most shameless record, and sight Phil Collin’s growing popularity as one of the reasons it is musically inferior. Despite this hatred, there are still those who say that the record represents a sort of rebirth of the band, and some even dare rank it among the band’s best. As a loyal Genesis fan myself, I am conflicted. I adore the quirkiness of the old albums, but I also can’t stop my foot from tapping whenever I listen to one of their later works. After a play through of the album, along with a good amount of soul searching, I’ve found that Abacab is the product of a band in transition. Ababcab marked the point in which Genesis officially made a dive into straightforward pop music, and despite the fact that the album hits some high marks and won the band new fans, the group does struggles at certain points in the new genre, and alienates older fans in the process.

As the instrumental outro of the title track fades out, the album makes an unexpected turn with the next track, “No Reply at All”. The transition is a bit jarring, as the album shifts from classic synth heavy Genesis to a track that feels more at home on an Earth, Wind, and Fire LP. Sure the hook is catchy, and I found my foot tapping along to the horn section, but this track felt horribly out of place in a Genesis record. I’m not saying that Genesis hasn’t bit the forbidden fruit that is pop music before, but this track in particular feels extra shameless. I think it’s those horn sections in particular, which seem like they were slapped on in order to appeal to a larger audience, and ride on the success of Phil Collin’s budding solo career. The band would later master the art of prog-pop, but at this point they were still finding their footing. What you end up with here is a schizophrenic dance tune that charted well with the mainstream (making it to number 2 on the US mainstream rock charts), but leaves core Genesis fans in the cold.

Finally the chaos dies down, and audiences are greeted to an electronic drum beat and some melodic piano work that welcome in the track “Me and Sarah Jane”, a solo piece from Keyboardist and unsuccessful solo album enthusiast Tony Banks. A solid track, “Me and Sarah Jane” feels like a Genesis track should; a six ish minute track dominated by synth and vocals. It sounds like something straight out of the Trick of the Tail – Wind and Wuthering period of the late 70’s, and it feels almost like the band is apologizing to longtime fans for “No Reply at all”. The A.V. club’s Jason Heller also praised the song’s similarity to the band’s back catalogue , saying that “Me And Sarah Jane” features hints of the odd structures, rhythmic counterpoint, and melodic twists of Gabriel-era Genesis” (Heller). Genesis songs of old had a certain beautiful messiness to them, and “Sarah Jane” captures that perfectly. Despite the praise, the song’s return to the older flavors of Genesis only makes the album feel more disjointed and inconsistent.

That feeling of inconsistency only gets worse as we move into “Keep it Dark”. For as well put together as “Me and Sarah Jane” was, “Keep it Dark” is almost vomit inducing. Seriously, this track is such a mess that I honestly did not feel good while listening to it. There’s just too much going on here, from that obnoxious looping main riff to the obnoxious keyboard licks, it’s almost unbearable. However, I feel like these problems are more technical than anything. What “Keep it Dark” suffers from is a terrible mix on both the original and the 2007 remaster. The worst is when it hits the chorus, which has so much going on that it sounds like three jet engines going at full blast while a guy does a Phil Collins impression off to the side. The instruments felt like they were all fighting to be the loudest, and it felt less like a song and more like static from a TV. Most disappointing is that underneath all of it lies the foundation of a good track. I thought Collin’s vocals complimented the keyboard line well, but like I said the track is held back by bad sound mixing and an ugly lead riff that sounds more like something you’d hear at a carnival ride rather than a Genesis album.

Ugly mixes and shoddy riffs aside, “Keep it Dark” does one thing right; it ends, taking us right into “Dodo/Lurker”, arguably the album’s best tune. Like the album’s opening track, “Dodo” explodes into my ears without the slightest hesitation with a bombastic intro reminiscent of “Behind the Lines” from the band’s previous LP Duke, and may once again be a shock to those unprepared. It’s simply a great track, and a personal favorite of mine. Keyes’s dominate here, but some excellent rhythm guitar work from Mr. Mike Rutherford valiantly manages to fights its way through. Unlike the rest of the album, “Dodo” feels like one big well rounded nugget of music that perfectly demonstrates how Genesis could still create epic, Avant garde progressive pieces with ease.

Some might even ask why the entire album wasn’t similar to the song, but you have to understand that this was a strange time for Genesis, if not all of music business in general. The band were dealing with something completely foreign to them – fame. Sure the band had seen success in their in their long time progressive niche, but this was different, way different. Records were selling, and shows were sold out as the band went closer and closer into the mainstream, and with the new fans came new expectations. The tour supporting the album was the band’s highest grossing, and that trend only continued to grow, and by 1986 Genesis would be the biggest band in the world.The group successfully satisfied the ravenous hunger of both groups of fans in 1980’s Duke, but the group struggled a bit with their sophomore effort. Banks said it best in an interview from Uncut magazine, saying “It’s surprisingly difficult to write a concise song that works. It’s much easier for us to write a 26- minute epic, where you don’t have got to worry about choruses and stuff, than it is to write a four-minute song that really works,” (Bonner). Genesis eventually took a new direction towards focusing their efforts on making music for the proletariat. The new fans vastly outnumbered the older ones, and with more people came more money. Twenty minute songs are fun, but not exactly as profitable as a a “Sussudio” or a “Living Years”.

This fact becomes apparent in the following track “Who Dunnit”, which also has the distinct honor of being one of the most hated pieces of music in existence. Fans both veteran and casual all seem to hate this little song like it’s cousin Oliver from The Brady Bunch or something. Many of the diehards often cite this song as the moment that Genesis damned themselves to the sevens hell’s of popular music. Critic Terry Jackson from “Prognaut” passed the song off entirely in their review of the album, saying “the much-maligned “Who Dunnit?” most likely deserves the malignment it’s been given” (Jackson). Personally…I don’t really mind it. I don’t particularly like, but I also don’t think that it’s the manifestation of the Antichrist that some people make it out to be. Sure the song has some ugly sounding keyboard effects, and the repetition of “I didn’t do it” kind of got a little bit uncomfortable because it went on a bit too long, but it really is just a weird little song. It’s almost like the Jake Lloyd of Genesis songs; sure it’s fun to trash and blame things on it, but it’s more of a byproduct of the real issues rather than the source of them.

The final three songs feel like three separate parts of one long piece, yet none of them are very remarkable on their own. “Man on the Corner” feels almost like an extension of the intro “Duchess” off of Duke, with both of them having a similar progression and an almost identical electronic drum loop. “Like it or Not” does have that feeling of classic Genesis grandiosity to it, but it doesn’t really have that same punch as similar tracks like “Dance on a Volcano” or “Afterglow”, and ends up feeling a bit anemic because of it. The strongest of three is “Another Record”, which does a good job of closing the record. I was a surprised when I heard it the first time through, mainly because the intro sounds almost like a Metallica song. I actually made sure I wasn’t on shuffle because I didn’t want any hard rock tunes to catch me off guard and take my lunch money. After the intro the song turns into pretty standard Genesis fare, and before you know it the record is over.

After all is said and done, where does Ababcab rest in the pantheon of Genesis albums? Well by no means does it deserve to sit by epics such as The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway or Foxtrot, but it’s not exactly sitting at the kid’s table eating glue with Calling All Stations either. Abacab is the product of a band in transition that took a leap of faith into the world of pop, and the album feels very rushed and inconsistent because of it. It tries too hard to appeal to fans both old new, and doesn’t feel very cohesive because of it. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t bright spots, and the album has a couple of very solid tracks that deserve places among the band’s best.

Where Abacab really succeeds is in its ability to serve as a representation of the awkward transition Genesis, along with several other progressive bands, were making during the time. King Crimson, Yes, Pink Floyd; nobody was safe from changing musical landscape brought on by the dawn of the 80’s. Even former front-man Peter Gabriel was already shocking his monkey at that point. But instead of buckling and becoming a third rate rock group, Genesis evolved, and quickly learned to embraced this new land of confusion.