Genesis (Genesis album)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article or section reads like a review and may need a cleanup.
Please help improve this article to make it neutral in tone and meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
For other albums titled Genesis, see Genesis (album).
Genesis
Genesis cover
Studio album by Genesis
Released October 3, 1983
Recorded February - August 1983 at The Farm, Surrey
Genre Rock, pop rock, progressive rock
Length 45:59
Label Atlantic Records
Vertigo Records
Virgin Records
Producer Genesis, Hugh Padgham
Professional reviews
Genesis chronology
Three Sides Live
(1982)		 Genesis
(1983)		 Invisible Touch
(1986)

Genesis is an eponymous album by Genesis and is their twelfth studio album, recorded and released in 1983. Most fans, as well as the band themselves, refer to this album as the "Shapes" album, or simply, the "Mama," "Tupperware Toys" or "Pieces" album.

Building on the advancements of Abacab, Genesis (so named for the fact that all three band members composed every song together) was a further example of Genesis' evolution in the 1980s. The album also marked the beginning of Hugh Padgham's formal production assistance after engineering Abacab.

The drum machine, used to startling effect on lead-single "Mama", was central to the song's atmosphere, and was responsible for further opening up songwriting possibilities within the band. One of their most uncommercial releases, "Mama" became Genesis' biggest UK hit, reaching #4 upon release although the song tanked on the US singles chart.

Further successes "That's All" (which became the band's first US Top 10 hit), "Illegal Alien" and "Taking It All Too Hard" ensured that Genesis was well-received upon its release and it consequently reached UK # 1, while making #9 in the US and eventually selling over four million copies there alone. The album was followed by the highly successful Mama tour, which was the last tour to fully incorporate both older and newer Genesis materials until the 2007 Turn It On Again tour.

Among fans, the album has a generally favourable, yet still mixed reputation. The sheer catchiness of some of the songs clearly paved the way for the shift to pop which was to happen with the next two albums, influenced in no small way by the huge successes of Phil Collins' solo ventures, Face Value and Hello, I Must Be Going!. However, the complexity of the song forms and the sheer inventiveness of the sonic landscape of this album make it one of Genesis' most musically developed albums as well[citation needed]. Combining the new sounds developed over the last two albums, and with a wide array of technology and one of the largest array of synthesisers in the business, this album shows Genesis truly experimenting with sound ("Second Home by the Sea" in particular), in ways that combine the power of Abacab with the instrumental and atmospheric adventures of Genesis in its heyday.

While the album certainly features straight-out pop songs, they still retain the abstruse chording of Genesis' past ("Taking it All Too Hard", for example, is full of seventh chords and subtle key shifts). While many of the sonically experimental songs remain shorter in form ("Silver Rainbow", "It's Gonna Get Better"), the album continues to break new ground. The song, "Just a Job To Do," was featured during a montage of the popular Miami storyline on the daytime soap opera Days of our Lives in 1985.

Opening with dark, haunting, sonic minimalism, "Mama" is a foray into direct sexuality which is often absent from Genesis' more directly intellectual or pastoral sides. The song builds gradually from the spare drum machine track and guitar and synth fills, strips down again, and then builds to a climax (accompanied near the end by Collins' gated live drum, similar to his own "In the Air Tonight"). It became a favorite in Genesis' live act.

The centrepiece of the album, "Home by the Sea," opens with a haunting, jaunty mid-tempo riff covered with electronic effects, and culminates in a dark, long form instrumental soundscape. Layers of processed sounds and minimalist keyboard and guitar lines produce the musical complexity which Genesis' earlier compositions achieved with counterpointed harmonised instrumental parts. At once recalling the experimentation of earlier works, yet full of pop phrasings which managed to gain many new fans, the "shapes album" aims for a precarious balance, one which, according to many critics and fans, the band was able to pull off.

While this album contains many catchy songs, most fans still consider this album a small masterpiece in the Genesis catalogue, even if in hindsight it directly lead to the sea-change towards pop which was to come with their next release, Invisible Touch.

A SACD / DVD double disc set (including new 5.1 and Stereo mixes) was released in October 2007 in Europe and as a CD and DVD double disc set in the US and Canada a month later.

Contents

[edit] Track listing

All songs by Tony Banks/Phil Collins/Mike Rutherford

[edit] Side one

  1. "Mama" (lyrics: Phil Collins) – 6:46
  2. "That's All" (lyrics: Phil Collins) – 4:23
  3. "Home by the Sea/Second Home by the Sea" (lyrics: Tony Banks) – 11:14

[edit] Side two

  1. "Illegal Alien" (lyrics: Phil Collins) – 5:14
  2. "Taking It All Too Hard" (lyrics: Mike Rutherford) – 3:56
  3. "Just a Job to Do" (lyrics: Mike Rutherford) – 4:45
  4. "Silver Rainbow" (lyrics: Tony Banks) – 4:28
  5. "It's Gonna Get Better" (lyrics: Phil Collins) – 4:59

[edit] Personnel

[edit] Miscellanea

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • The shapes on the album cover are plastic blocks from the Shape-O Toy made by Tupperware.
  • In the band interviews of the newly-released CD/DVD collection, both Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford say they think this is the worst Genesis album cover art of the band's career.
  • The band photo in the album liner notes is a promo photograph from the "Illegal Alien" music video.
  • "Just a Job to Do" was used as the theme of the 1985 ABC Television series The Insiders.
  • Mike Rutherford has stated in numerous interviews that side 1 of the record (which includes Mama through Second Home By The Sea) is some of the best music that Genesis recorded in their entire career.

[edit] Tour

Genesis toured in support of the self-titled album nicknaming the tour The Mama Tour between November, 1983 and March of 1984.

[edit] Setlist

  1. Dodo/Lurker
  2. Abacab
  3. That's All
  4. Mama
  5. "Eleventh Earl of Mar"/"Ripples"/"Squonk"/"Firth of Fifth" medley (first US leg)
  6. "Eleventh Earl of Mar"/"Behind The Lines"/"Firth of Fifth"/"The Musical Box (Closing section)" medley (Beginning Of The Second US leg)
  7. "Eleventh Earl of Mar"/"The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway"/"Firth of Fifth/"The Musical Box" (Second Us Leg and British leg)
  8. Illegal Alien
  9. Home by the Sea/Second Home By the Sea
  10. Keep It Dark
  11. It's Gonna Get Better
  12. In the Cage
  13. The Cinema Show (closing section)/Riding the Scree (teaser)/Cinema Show (continued)/...In That Quiet Earth/Slippermen
  14. Afterglow
  15. Drum Duet
  16. Los Endos

Encore:

  1. Misunderstanding
  2. Turn It On Again (extended version with a Medley that included In the Midnight Hour, (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, Pinball Wizard,

The Carpet crawlers, Man On The Corner and Who Dunnit? were played early on in the tour, but were dropped a short while in.

[edit] Personnel

v • d • e
Genesis
Tony Banks • Phil Collins • Mike Rutherford
Peter Gabriel • Steve Hackett • Anthony Phillips • John Mayhew • John Silver • Chris Stewart • Ray Wilson
Session Musicians: Bill Bruford • Chester Thompson • Daryl Stuermer • Nir Zidkyahu • Nick D'Virgilio • Anthony Drennan
Studio albums
Live albums
Compilations
Box Sets
EPs
Films
Live videos
Books
Genesis: A Biography • Genesis: Chapter & Verse
Other