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Catch an abacab and ride back to the main Genesis page! You Can Never Seem to Find an Abacab in This City
Overall Album Score: 7.9 out of 10 Even though it isn't the great pop creation that everyone and their pet bobcats told me that it was, the story of Abacab is mostly good news. The most obvious piece of good news about it is that this is the greatest Genesis album ever since Trick of the Tail. Hooray! The most probable reason for this is that Phil Collins finally decided to steer the band to a place that he was more creatively comfortable with. And good on him! Genesis had pretty much exhausted out all of their ambitions for creating good progressive music, anyway, so going POP was not a misguided decision ... in fact, it was a very wise decision. It wasn't really uncalled for, either ... Peter Gabriel was making pop music some years before this, after he left Genesis! So ... yeah! Furthermore, Genesis doesn't turn into a regular pop band. Philly Boy & Co. knew that they had an important 'legacy' or whatever, so they justify going pop by making it *artistic pop*. Oh yeah! And, really, this *artistic pop* nonsense also helps make up for Phil Collins' (even though we all love the guy) songwriting incapability! Listen to Abacab from beginning to end, and you'll see that the pop-hooks are rather scant. (The title track and "No Reply At All" are the most infectious pop songs in the album, so they do have some nice pop-hooks. "Me and Sarah Jane," a good song, isn't even a pop song! It's progressive!) Pop-hooks are precisely what makes pop songs memorable. So, if you can't come up with wonderful hooks, then lets make art-pop music! This weird principle that I just made up *does* work for Genesis to an extent. Unfortunately, it doesn't work completely (it isn't insanely artistic ... like "Roxy Music" artsy pop), and I'm left with an album that I don't know how to love. ... It sounds like a song that I could write. Oh Abacaaaaaaaaaab, I don't know how to looooooove theeeeeeeeee!
I'll also add that it's interesting that the band's drummer (that is, Phil Collins) would be so interested in drum machines ... even though it was all the rage back in 1981 ... I guess Phil was too busy singing to want to personally man the drumsticks... Overall Album Score: 7.9 out of 10 (This is quite a stark improvement on Duke because, at least, there's stuff in here that is memorable ... now whether they're WORTH remembering is something that's left up to you!) Average Song Score: 8.2 (Genesis has finally metamorphed into a pop band with prog tendencies. There aren't really any 'classics' on here, but there are enough good moments on here to make this one worthwhile.) Album Tilt: 7.5 (Hmmm... While I enjoy listening to it, there's not anything I can love about Abacab. Oh Abacaaaaaaaaaab...) Artist Rating: 8.0 (Well, at least Phil Collins finally figured out what he wanted to do as head of Genesis! ... If he finds that adopting drum machines and writing strange pop music is something that's more comfortable, then all the more power to him. ...At least this band is 'experimenting!') Track Reviews Abacab 8.5/10 Oh man ... this song is looooooooong! Nevertheless, this first track of the I-wanna-do-no-Prog-no-more Genesis is pretty dang promising! Yep ... there's a drum machine ... some good pop hooks ... and, it's led by a poppy-synthesizer. Yet, this isn't a faceless pop song. One would certainly believe that a band that had some artistic stuff in their backgrounds was performing this song. Tony Banks, instead of overflowing these songs in crazy synthesizer textures, is taking a more Roxy Music approach to this track. It has a central-groove, but there's a bunch of strange little trinkets of noise throughout that keeps it interesting. And, that's not to mention, either, that there's an electric guitar here. Yep. Genesis going pop wasn't a bad thing. Especially since this is much more memorable than anything that we heard in Duke. No Reply At All 9/10 This one has an interesting groove to it! Again, Genesis comes up with a song that's definitely pop, but it's not ordinary pop. It's fun, catchy, and danceable ... yet, it is far from banality. There are many different sections within this that are musically different. (I especially like the middle part of this with that nice piano.) This is quite entertaining! Me and Sarah Jane 9/10 Well ... Tony Banks and his powerhouse of synthesizers really created something nice here ... but why is this a prog-rock song? I thought we quit doing prog and started doing pop! This is the only track here that's completely credited to Tony Banks, and it's a more entertaining prog-rock song than anything in Duke and most everything from And Then There Were Three. Banks rules! ... finally! His synths provide some very entertaining textures, and the song even has some entirely decent hooks. This is fantastic! (It ought to have been on Duke ... I would have liked something on that album, then.) Keep it Dark 7/10 Alright! We're back to the pop ... but where are the hooks? All we get here is this strange groove and a melody that hardly does anything to it. I suppose that this was a bit of an experiment in 'industrial pop.' It's not awful or anything ... but it's a bit of a failure. Dodo/Lurker 9/10 How bizarre! This is almost a perfectly ordinary 80s-style reggae pop song, except it keeps on wanting to turn into a prog-rock song. ...And the end result is pretty dang cool! The hooks aren't quite strong enough to make this a very effective pop song, but the prog elements are pretty good. Who Dunnit? 7.5/10 You insane-heads! This is a CRAZY song that's just ... um ... crazy! This one's hooks are so primitive that it sounds something like I might have heard once on an old children's television program. The lyrics are primitive like that, too. It's experimental! Who am I to say that this is bad? At least it's not 8 minutes long! Man on the Corner 8/10 Oh! Phil Collins is writing his own songs now! Why doesn't he just start his own solo career? ... Oh huh! He already did that. Silly me. I guess if you like Phil Collins stuff, this song'll be all right. But, it doesn't really catch fire, does it? It's just a simple lite-rock riff and a drum machine in the background. Kinda boring. Like it or Not 8/10 Like it or not, this song is slightly better than "Man on the Corner!" ... If there's one thing that Phil Collins shouldn't do is embark on his own solo career ... Oh *darn*, too late! Don't you just hate it when you try to give somebody advise, and they go out and record about six solo albums? It happens to *me* all the time! ...Alright, Phil Collins is okay and his solo stuff is ... okay ... But this Michael Rutherford song at least has more interesting arrangements if the hooks in here aren't quite as good. So if Michael Rutherford wants to start up his own band, and I'll randomly suggest a name for his new band, "Mike + the Mechanics," he could go ahead and do that, too. (That was a clever name I just made up, wasn't it? ... I thought so, too.) Another Record 8/10 Oh! This song is on another record! I won't review it, then. Hey! I'm not listening to a 'record!' I'm listening to streaming audio over the Internet. Why isn't this song called 'Another Streaming Audio Thing Over the Internet?' You see again, I give some good advise, but it's too late for it! WELL, this is another entertaining Genesis song, but it doesn't really catch fire. The hooks are a bit weak, but I can sit through it and be perfectly content. Hello, you! If you wanna, you can leave a comments about ABACAAAAB here. slb23@shaw.ca (Simon B.) received Sept. 10, 2004 I think this is my favourite Phil Collins pop era Genesis
album. It sounds (to me) like a mix of pop, rock, prog, and a bit of
(gasp!) new wave, making it a pleasant listen (except for "Who Dunnit?"
which I think is one of the worst Genesis songs, along with the majority
of ...AND THEN THERE WERE THREE).
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All reviews are copyrighted by Michael Lawrence. He once shared an Abbacab with Benny Anderson.
