#43
February 15 1980
Mike Rutherford
Smallcreep’s Day
Genre: Prog Rock
2.5 out of 5
Highlights:
Out in the Daylight (I think…it’s about 18 minutes into Side One’s suite)
I don’t remember Genesis sounding like a cross between The Who, Yes and Pink Floyd, but, in retrospect, maybe that’s exactly the Venn Diagram where they lived.
With the band on hiatus and nothing to do, I guess 1000 piece puzzles weren’t interesting enough to Mike so he took an obscure surreal book about an assembly line factory worker and wrote half an album about it. And, look, factory work was a nigh on obsession with some of our best 70s British rockers. Their fathers and uncles and peers no doubt toiled in those buildings for life and that took its toll.
This is an interesting prog experiment that is benign enough but, as I have said in other reviews, concept albums, story albums, are just just difficult for me to follow. I’ve often found that the the form doesn’t really work for me, I can’t follow a story told in elliptical rhymes and metaphoric instrumental passages. It took me forever to really understand the story of The Wall, until it was depicted for me, and Tommy…well, I was just confused.
Look, I know that’s a failing of mine but, at least the aforementioned had hummable, catchy tunes that propelled the albums beyond their narratives.
That doesn’t happen here. Thing is, when Side Two abandons the story (I guess it’s completed by the Suite), the collections of songs are just boring.
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