Genesis

Wind and Wuthering

The Last Hurrah

Review Score:

(8/10)
In my opinion the truly classic era of Genesis did not end with the leaving of Gabriel, but of Hacket. And here we reach 'Wuthering', the last Hacket albumn, after which the remaining trio would pretty much loose all of its rich heritage. It is a bittersweet, melancholy albumn as indicated by its drab but interesting grey cover.

We start out with 'Eleventh Earl of Mar', a good old-fashioned Genesis song about the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715. (Granted, it was actually the 6th Earl of Mar, but that wouldn't fit the meter and the other historcal facts mentioned in the lyrics were basically was accurate.) It begins and ends with a chilling, eerie synthesizer that will be repeated with less-frightening effects later on in the albumn. In any case, its a strong, rhytmic song that's good but doesn't grab you like the Gabriel-era long songs. 'Eleventh Earl of Mar', like most of the albumn, employs the complex 'wall of sound' method that works to varying degrees.

Next we get 'One for the Vine', one of the albumn's high points, that continues along the same lines as the previous song regarding the cyclic concept regarding war. Here we follow one anonymous man as he flees from the madness of religious fanatacism only to become the object of that fanatacism himself. Lyrically it is simple but wonderful, and the music reinforces the cyclic concept just as it did in the previous song. However, the music, while good, doesn't flow completely well with the lyrics, especially at the end, where an admittedly good intrumental segment draws on and takes the punch out of the crucial last few lines. Nonetheless, the music itself is quality and the instrumental during the title scene is possibly the best moment musically on the albumn.

However, after a good star the quality segues. 'Your Own Special Way', alas, is the albumn's low point. It's a love song, wrtten in first person. Those two things, of course, are the antithesis of classic Genesis and the song is redeemed only by some decent keyboard work, but even that turns into what sounds like noodling. 'Wot Gorilla' is a bizarrely named, eclectic intrumental bit that, like 'One for the Vine's music, isn't bad but fails to truly grasp you. Following 'Wot Gorilla' is another eclectic piece, 'All in a Mouse's Night.' Here we continue on the classic Genesis tradition of having one comical mini-play per albumn, though, alas, it stumbles with Collin's vocals. Similar songs like 'Get 'Em Out by Friday' and 'The Battle of Epping Forest' suceeded party because Gabriel would go all-out and do a variety of comical, quirky voices for the many characters. Collin's vocals fail to be so dynamic, and thus a major part of the humor is lost in the otherwise quite witty story.

Thankfully, the albumn gets it into high gear with 'Blood on the Rooftops', Hacket's swan song with the band. His gacoustic uitar intro is simply wonderful, harkening back to his 'Horizons' piece on 'Foxtrot'. Then we get into Collin's vocals that work surprisingly well, and through the lyrics are distinctly English, their message about apathy to the world around us is hauntingly appropriate 25 years later. The song is, in my opinion, the albumn's overall high point and one of the best songs from Collins-era Genesis.

Then we move into the sonic trio. 'Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers' is a quality, soothing synthesizer-driven short that ends with the drumroll that signals 'In that Quiet Earth', a funky intrumental that, while not as good as the likes of 'After the Ordeal or 'The Brazilian', is still a good 'wall of sound' and repeats the harrowing opening notes of '11th Earl of Mar', though with less menace. Finally it all ends with 'Afterglow' a somewhat poppy first-person ballad that, unlike 'Your Own Special Way', truly works well and seems to fittingly close the albumn with a mournful tone.

The second half of the albumn is quality, though the first slumps after 'One for the Vine'. Nonetheless, it is a fond farewell that marks the end of Hacket and the end of Genesis's classic period, which had produced some of the best music ever heard by these ears.

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