Genesis – A Trick of the Tail (2007)
Artist: Genesis
Album: A Trick of the Tail
Genre: Symphonic Prog
Label: Virgin
Year Of Release: 1976/2007
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue)
Tracklist:
1. Dance on a Volcano (5:53)
2. Entangled (6:28)
3. Squonk (6:27)
4. Mad Man Moon (7:35)
5. Robbery, Assault and Battery (6:15)
6. Ripples (8:03)
7. A Trick of the Tail (4:34)
8. Los Endos (5:46)
Personnel:
– Phil Collins / lead & backing vocals, drums, percussion
– Steve Hackett / electric & 12-string guitars
– Tony Banks / RMI Electra-Piano, ARP Pro Soloist synth, Hammond organ, Mellotron, Echoplex, Leslie cabinet, 12-string guitar, backing vocals
– Mike Rutherford / bass, bass pedals, 12-string guitar
“A Trick Of The Tail” is the seventh studio album of Genesis and that was released in 1976. The line up on the album is Phil Collins, Steve Hackett, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford.
This is another album that represents another turning point in their career. It’s considered by some people the first neo-prog album in rock history. After the release of the sixth Genesis’ studio album “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” in 1974 and during the live tour of that album in May of 1975, Gabriel announced that he was leaving the band. At the time, and after the band auditioned over 400 lead singers to find a replacement front man to the group, and because Collins had already provided some vocal work on Genesis, the band decided that he was the right man to replace Gabriel.
So, that change transformed the band from a quintet to a quartet. If the problem of the singer became resolved, it raised the problem of a drummer for their live shows. So, they decided to engage Chester Thompson which is an American drummer and session musician who played with Weather Report and Frank Zappa to perform on their live shows.
After Gabriel’s departure, Genesis continued to record strong albums. It’s clearly to me that wasn’t Gabriel’s departure that shattered Genesis as a progressive rock band. Great songs and great ideas can be found on “A Trick Of The Tail”, which can mainly be attributed to Banks, as well as Hackett, who, as usual, rarely appears as a composer, but makes the songs something special with his wonderful guitar lines. Here we have a more flavour, more pressure, more variety, more melody and a more oriented song structure. The compositions, which increasingly take on a clear song structure, are quite nice and have a pleasing sound. The album spreads a wonderful melancholic atmosphere, which I really like. In addition, we have a denser and partly more bombastic basic sound and we have also the new and beautiful voice of Collins. And while I miss Gabriel’s voice, it’s also interesting to hear what Collins can do. At some points his voice sounds a bit like Gabriel, especially where it’s loud and intense. The quiet vocal passages are very pleasant to hear too.
“A Trick Of The Tail” has eight tracks. “Dance On A Volcano” is a great opener. It’s full of frantic rhythmic variations. It has a beautiful melody and complex changes which corresponds to the great expectations created around this new studio work. “Entangled” is a nice pastoral piece that features a superb acoustic guitar work by Hackett accentuated by a fantastic Mellotron work by Banks. It’s a wonderful and melodic song that makes us glide and dream. “Squonk” has a fantastic and memorable opening and a remarkable fantastic drumming work. It’s a very simple song with great choral work. “Mad Man Moon” is one of the most beautiful songs on the album, one of my favourites. It’s one of the most beautiful songs created by Genesis. It has a nice chorus and a wonderful keyboard work. It became as one of the most beloved songs of Genesis in Hackett’s era. “Robbery, Assault And Battery” is a great song especially due to its imaginative rhythms and time changes. It has a great instrumental middle section with great individual performances by all band’s members. “Ripples” is a calm and beautiful song. It has nice guitar and keyboard textures. Hackett’s guitar work is stunning, accompanied by a soft and wonderful keyboard work by Banks. It represents the quiet and calm track on the album. The title track is an accessible track with its interesting lyrics. Still, it’s one of the less progressive songs on the album. It sounds more like a song to be released as a hit single. So, despite be nice, it’s the weakest and less interesting track on the album. “Los Endos” is a fantastic instrumental piece, my favourite track on the album. It’s one of the favourite tracks of Genesis’ fans. It serves to resume the all album because it has some elements of all the other tracks. It’s an energetic track, a great closer to the album. “Los Endos” became an emblematic song. It became part of the songs chosen to be part of almost all of their live shows and became commonly used to close almost all of them.
Conclusion: “A Trick Of The Tail” is the first album released by Genesis as a quartet and without their front man and song writer Gabriel. It was surely, a horrible moment for them. Certainly Collins was nervous wondering if Genesis’ fans would accept him as the new front man of the band. However, and despite the loss of Gabriel, the band continued to deliver excellent musical moments for their fans, and “A Trick Of The Tail” represents an excellent example of that. Here Genesis found a new direction instead of simply revisited their past works. As I wrote above, some consider “A Trick Of The Tail” the first neo-prog album in history, but others consider that was “Market Square Heroes”, the debut EP of Marillion. Anyway and furthermore, “A Trick Of The Tail” remains as an important milestone in the progressive rock and in particular to the neo-prog sub-genre. It reveals also and undoubtedly that this is an album with great quality of Genesis. This is in reality an essential album for everyone who really loves progressive rock music with great beauty.
Review by e210013, sputnikmusic
