Phil Collins

Face Value

A Terrific Album where Collins brings his own style to front

Review Score:

(8/10)
One never knows what to expect when an artist releases a solo album when he has had a successful tenure with an established band. Such was the case when Phil Collins released "Face Value" in 1981. It usually is a case of hit or miss. In the case of miss, often the artist will just continue with the established band. In the case of hit, many times it means leaving the established band. There are some cases where the solo artist has maintained a duel career as a solo artist and band member. This would be the formula that Phil Collins would follow over the next decade. Phil Collins was now entering a third decade as a member of the band Genesis. In the mid 1970s, when lead singer Peter Gabriel departed Genesis, drummer Phil Collins would replace him as lead singer. Collins was now beginning to catapult Genesis to more and more commercial success. Genesis was continuing to grow in popularity by the beginning of the 1980s when Collins released "Face Value". In this case (and on many of his solo albums), it provided an outlet for Phil Collins to explore avenues of music beyond the progressive rock sound that Genesis had so finely tuned.

Collins has three avenues on this particular album. The first one is that he introduces brass horns on many of the tracks - this is something that would become a staple of Phil Collins' career in the 1980s. As you listen to the brass horns, you actually will see some simularities to the sound of Earth, Wind, and Fire. In fact, the EWF horns (from the EWF band) are used on the Beatles remake "Tommorow Never Knows" In addition to Brass horns, there are many other tracks that introduce a String element (Violin, Cello, etc). The second avenue that Collins goes down is what I term a "dark psychedelic" element. The best way I can describe this is this is the kind of music you might hear on a quiet, dark city street - with a touch of psychedelica. A lot of this avenue can be traced back to his days with Genesis. The third avenue overlaps the other two avenues - Phil Collins powerful and haunting drums can be heard across many of the tracks on this collection.

The Brass Element comes into play on the third track of the album. "Behind the Lines" is a song that Genesis did on the "Duke" album (and later on the "Three Sides Live" album). In general, Phil Collins and Genesis have had an unwritten pact not to overlap the the group's catalog with the solo catalog. So it is very rare Genesis will do a Phil Collins solo song and vice versa. In this case, since Collins was launching his solo career as a compliment to Genesis, it probably didn't hurt. This is the only remake of a Genesis song Collins would ever do on his solo albums. On Collins' version of "Behind the Lines", it adds a completely new dimension to a legendary song - mainly because of the horns and a more upbeat tempo.

"Hand in Hand" has become a staple to open Phil Collins' concerts up in the 1990s. For the most part it is an instrumental with basically a choir element going "nah nah nah nah nah nah". It is a pretty unorthodox opening song to a concert and it is just as unorthodox on this album - however this is on terrific song. The instrumentals on this song feature the horns and some haunting drums by Phil Collins himself. Other horn influenced songs include :"I Missed Again" - which was a Top 20 hit, "Thunder and Lightning" - a very underrated and often forgotten song in the Phil Collins portfolio, and the Beatles remake "Tommorow Never Knows" The ballad "If Leaving Me is Easy" doesn't have trumpets or trombones, but it does have a nice saxaphone element to open the song.

The "dark psychedelic" element is heard on several tracks as well. The most obvious is the legendary Phil Collins track, "In the Air Tonight" ( there also is a nice violin that is included as well). The "Roof is Leaking" is a very quiet song, but has some pretty powerful lyrics - probably the most "serious" of all the songs. It features some Banjo and a slide guitar. "Droned" is another instrumental. "Droned" almost sounds like a preamble to "Hand in Hand". It would have been nice if they actually had a better segue between the 2 songs. The piano based song "You Know What I Mean" - while less on the psychedlic side still may fall a bit on the dark side. Finally, Collins remake of "Tommorow Never Knows" while having a horn element - also falls on this dark side. The instrumentals are terrific, but Collins voice sounds a little to distorted to me.

A couple of songs that give us a preview for what Collins will do over the next decade are "This Must Be Love" and "I'm Not Moving". "This Must Be Love" has a sound you will hear on many of the Collins love ballads he would do over the next 3 albums. "I'm Not Moving" - with touches of psychedelica brings that happy, upbeat Phil Collins sound that also would be a staple of his career over the next decade.

The liner notes are terrific with full production credits. All of the lyrics are included except the Genesis song "Behind the Lines" and Beatles song "Tommorow Never Knows". This album is a more dark album than the albums that follow, but it is a very good effort and really compliments the Genesis work well. It's a shame that many of the songs on this album are ignored by Collins in concert and on his greatest hits collection. This collection has a lot to offer and should is recommended for any fans with an interest in Phil Collins.

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