Genesis - Abacab
#424
By Timothy Sprague
September 1981
Genesis
ABACAB
Genre: Pop Prog
Allen’s Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Tim’s rating: 3.5 out of 5
There is no more evil synthesizer solo in the annals of popular music than the one that Tony Banks crafted for the title song of the 11th studio album by Genesis. It will make your teeth rattle if turned up to the proper volume. The song’s lyrics are such a weird jumble that Phil Collins refused to play it the last time that Genesis toured, saying he had no idea what it was about. Really Phil? Who gives a damn? The song is one of the best examples of just how good the trio could be when they wanted to shake the rafters of an arena full of adoring fans. Phil sure sounds angry about something, which is when he is at his best. But all the snarling bravado is immediately tempered by the next song, No Reply At All. By this time, the band had made a conscious decision to attempt to appeal to more than just their loyal cult following, although they did have quite poppy songs like Follow You Follow Me and Misunderstanding on their previous two albums, And Then There Were Three and Duke. But those albums still retained many of the elements that appealed to their base - long tracks, plenty of instrumental passages and concepty headphone-music lyrics. Abacab featured 9 separate songs, none of them longer than 7 minutes, 30 seconds. But they were still a respectable rock band, not yet reduced to the top-40 pandering that was to come with Invisible Touch in 1986. No Reply At All got a lot of radio airplay but still includes some interesting and complex horn and keyboard interplay. It sounds kind of like maybe they had been listening to a lot of early Chicago albums at the time and wanted to give it a go.
Me and Sarah Jane comes next and I always forget that this song is on Abacab not Duke. It sounds exactly like Duke. Once again, it’s very accessible but still has the signature elements that make it a Genesis song - lots of keyboards and soaring ethereal guitar sounds by Mike Rutherford, kind of mimicking the type of thing Steve Hackett did before he moved on from the group. The Roland drum machine that was used to great effect on Duke also makes another appearance. Side one ends with Keep It Dark, featuring a proggy jazz-fusiony riff and a really cool metallic clanking drum break to keep the older fans interested. Collins’ voice gets a good falsetto workout on this one and is a reminder of just how good his voice can be. I only wish that Genesis would have kept it darker in subsequent years.
Side Two kicks off with Dodo and Lurker, the most progressive rock tunes on the album. They are listed as separate tracks on the original LP but are really two parts of the same song. Tony Banks shines through once again on keyboards. There are some interesting twists and turns and Collins once again gets into Evil Phil mode behind the mic. His drumming is top notch, as always, and he really gets to pound away on this one. Who Dunnit continues the intensity and is another good example of how the band managed to balance weird arrangements with pop sensibilities. Roland the drum machine (as he was referred to on the Duke tour) makes another appearance on the next track, the haunting and melancholy Man On The Corner. The minimal style of the production works great and features some of the same elements that made In the Air Tonight so creepy. After that… there are a couple more songs that are utterly forgettable. I am a huge Genesis fan but, if you put a gun to my head and told me to name the last two songs on this album without looking at the cover, I would draw a complete blank. Like It Or Not sounds a lot like And Then There Were Three, which I rarely listen to. It’s a Mike Rutherford composition, which may explain the blandness. Tony Banks does break out an old keyboard sound from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway but that’s about the only positive thing I can say about it. Another Record closes out the album in nondescript fashion. They recorded Paperlate during the same sessions and released it on an EP following Abacab. It’s not their greatest work but would have been a lot better than ending the album with this clunker.
And, because this is the Listening Post, here is my little personal anecdote. I was and still am a major fan on Gabriel-era Genesis but also enjoyed albums like Abacab and Genesis. Being too young to attend many concerts when those albums came out, I was kind of excited that they were touring in support of Invisible Touch. But the god-awful title track was a turn-off and I did not make it a priority to get tickets for their show at the Worcester Centrum in Worcester, MA. As the date of the show approached, I started to regret not buying tickets, especially because the audience was going to be full of people who had never even heard of the band until recently. So, I got myself a seat on the Concert Coach, a bus that would take fans from Boston out to Worcester for all the shows that were happening out there at the time. The Boston Garden was no longer the main venue that popular bands played and you had to drag yourself all the way out to Worcester if you wanted to see Peter Gabriel, Jethro Tull, U2, Prince, REM, Rush and any other band that could sell out an arena. I got out to Worcester and started asking around outside the venue if anyone had a ticket. And I found one! For the ungodly sum of $40.00!!! I felt so irresponsible that I had spent a whopping 40 bucks just to see a rock show. The concert was great and the only time I sat on my hands was during some of the crappier material from the new album. The only other time I got to see them was at the Hollywood Bowl in 2007 in the pouring rain. It was such a torrential downpour by the end of the show that they stopped and didn’t play all the encores. And, unfortunately, no ABACAB because Phil didn’t understand what he was singing about. What a shame.
https://open.spotify.com/album/6KSLVAuJx6hWsYEk005uZj?si=bf_bzat6StCKqYz7INrKgA
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