Review Summary: The most ambitious album of Genesis’ quartet era, but still struggling in the delivery of pop songs
On this record we have a lively interplay but (to the listener’s dismay) Hackett is the less prominent musician in the recordings, anticipating his soon to be departure from the band, as he was disillusioned with the rejection of his compositions (in favour of Banks’ material) and the band’s choice to introduce instead simpler, shorter songs he considered “underdeveloped harmonically”.
In fact Tony Banks dominates the album, not only as the main writer, but he is literally everywhere playing a very large selection of instruments, at the point to gain an “etc.” in the personnel credits.
Every piece is quite complex and layered but when the musicianship is not that hot the overall sensation from these tracks is a sort of stiffness and icy formality. The lp is easily the most adventurous and sophisticated of the quartet era with an evident stress in trying to revisit or even surpass the “Supper’s ready” suite, looking for a melodic epic climax in quite every progressive song in the selection and revitalising the ‘English eccentric’ themes of their past outings.
The band presents here difficult progressive monsters such as the fabulous “Eleventh Earl of Mar” (the track to mention by whom consider this lp one of their best works), the more contemplative “One for the vine” (with very interesting melodic solutions), the fusion tinged “Wot gorilla” and the “All in a mouse’s night” characters play.
Side two could be considered even more interesting thanks to the Hackett penned material, “Blood the rooftops” (the best melody in the record) and the two “Unquiet slumbers” episodes (an inspiring musical research in here). The weakness of “Wind and wuthering” are the unripe ballads (for sure “Your own special way”, unfortunately “Afterglow” too), where is easy sensing that Genesis were walking on uncomfortable shoes (despite the fact that the previous album had plenty of very good catchy melodies experimenting in the ‘song’ format)…but they will learn very soon how to fix even that problem.
