“Eleventh Earl Of Mar” is a lengthy epic full of Phil’s pounding drums, and he’s starting to get more comfortable with his own voice too. Even longer, and better, is “One For The Vine”, which has some beautiful, haunting passages (these guys were always good at melodies) but takes a two-minute detour into a zany, windup-clock section, complete with an odd quote of the stereotypical “Egyptian” theme well known from so many cartoons, which deflates the emotion considerably. A song with mainstream appeal, “Your Own Special Way” doesn’t have the grand scope of the first two tracks, and is a nice pairing of two different ideas. The instrumental section still reminds us of the type of thing Leo Sayer was slathering all over AM radio at the time, but by removing this, a hit single emerges. The love-fest vibe is dispelled by “Wot Gorilla?”, a frenetic instrumental that fades in and out to the wacky effects familiar from “The Waiting Room”.
The cartoony “All In A Mouse’s Night” seems a rather silly idea upon which to hang a song, particularly after the military-based epics on side one. Nice melody in the opening section, though, and the closing guitar solo is grandiose in its own way. In contrast, “Blood On The Rooftops” begins with a Spanish guitar-tinged piece, and continues in a melancholy mode at odds with the lyrics describing various TV shows as social comment. “‘Unquiet Slumbers For The Sleepers…” has another impressionistic guitar intro, inspiring images of misty moors to match the titular quote from Wuthering Heights, continued in the more adventurous “…In That Quiet Earth’”, which incorporates all kinds of familiar melodies, and even predicts Asia’s “Here Comes The Feeling” but goes well into “Afterglow”. With its multiple layered harmonies, this almost Beatlesque track makes a fine finale, though even Tony Banks admits that the melody is too close to “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” for comfort.
Wind & Wuthering just makes it into the thumbs-up column, but it could still use some smoothing. Proof that this was the best they could do at the time is borne out by the subsequent release of the Spot The Pigeon EP, consisting of three leftovers from the sessions: “Match Of The Day”, about soccer; a tirade against “Pigeons” (“who put fifty tons of shit on the office roof” among other transgressions); and “Inside And Out”, a dull song about a paroled rapist with an extended ending that sounds like Styx.
Genesis Wind & Wuthering (1976)—3
I have really tried to get into this album over the years, but I still remain underwhelmed. One problem has been solved that the earliest albums with Phil singing lead have. I used to think that he was just a wimpy singer. As it turns out, his vocals were just placed too far back in the mix. The 2007 remixes fix that. Now, his vocals sound almost as strong as they would in the 80’s.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I don’t find the songwriting as sharp as it was on “A Trick of a Tail”. For starters, the instrumentals. I like Genesis’s long instrumental passages, but usually, only as parts of songs like “Supper’s Ready” or “The Fountain of Salmacis”; or, on “The Lamb..”, where they are effective as part of the soundtrack to Gabriel’s “mind-movie”. Here, they just seem to exist just to prove that the band can play, which we already knew. Space fillers without much purpose.
“Blood on the Rooftops” and “All in a Mouse’s Night”, despite the former being somewhat of a hardcore fan favorite, just pass me by, no matter how many listens. “Your Own Special Way” is a bit too languid to have been a big hit single, but it is the first indication that Mike was just as responsible as Phil for leading the band down a poppier path.
The other 3 songs are big winners. “Eleventh Earl of Mar” is a fine prog song, with great hooks and very interesting lyrics. “One For the Wine” are “Afterglow” are two of Banks’ best songs, but I think they came across better on “Three Sides Live”. The studio versions are a bit cluttered and overproduced.
I was surprised to learn that “Pigeons” and “Match of the Day” were from the album sessions. Written by the “pop trio”, it doesn’t sound like Hackett even plays on them. The lyrics are way more lightweight than anything on the album. But “Inside and Out “-- “dull” and “sounds like Styx”? This is a classic Genesis prog tune, arguably their last one. Easily should have bumped those instrumentals off to B-sides instead.