Review of Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway

Released 1974

"The porcelain mannekin with shattered skin fears attack. The eager pack lift up their pitchers- the carry all they lack. The liquid has congealed, which has seeped out through the crack, And the tickler takes his stickleback. The carpet crawlers heed their callers: 'We've got to get in to get out We've got to get in to get out'."

Hmmm.

Oh, how I wanted to love this album.

I have to preface this review with reference to my review of Foxtrot. Having nodded favourably at both Trepass and Nursery Cryme, I was downhearted by Genesis' third album. Buying Foxtrot for the first time as a seventeen year old, I was frustrated by what I saw as a self-indulgent and unnecessarily self-indulgent piece of nonsense. I was so disappointed by Foxtrot that I ignored it, along with the first two albums for over twenty years. Inexplicably, desperately and expensively I relented a few months later and splashed out a not inconsiderable sum on a brand new copy of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway.

I suppose, at the time, I hoped that I had misjudged Foxtrot as a momentary aberration, and that Lamb would restore my faith in the band.

Oh dear.

What a difficult album. Difficult in every sense: difficult to listen to, difficult to rationalise, difficult to understand just what on earth the band were trying to achieve, and unfortunately, difficult for me to like.

There are very few albums that I'll admit to not being able to listen to all the way through. But Lamb is very close to the top of that very small list of albums. To this day, I think I'm correct in saying that I haven't persevered for all four sides. To be honest, the prospect of sitting down to listen to the album to prepare this review is not one which I have approached with much enthusiasm. I'm sure many prog purists would reel back in horror that I would consider reviewing an album which I haven't yet sat all the way through. However this blog is intended to be as much about the experience of listening to the album (especially the first listen) as it is about the music itself.

It all starts off promisingly enough, with a lovely tinkling piano intro from Tony Banks. There are some genuinely wonderful moments easily on a par with any of the previous albums I had been exposed to. The key difference between TLLDOB and those other albums was very quickly apparent. Lamb had a concept, a very bizarre and not entirely convincing concept penned by Peter Gabriel, underlying it which bewildered everyone, including the remaining members of the band. My feeling is that the oddness of this may have made sense to Mr Gabriel but removed any focus or sense of purpose for the music. This may be an argument with a dodgy foundation as lyrically the previous albums were always eccentric and 'out there'. Because the concept is given so much emphasis on the sleeve, the listener (or at least this listener) feels compelled to concentrate on the alleged story rather than be caught up in the isolated islands of weirdness of separate tracks on their other albums.

To date, once I get beyond The Cage, it is this concentration which is the problem as I invariably lose interest. Usually it happens around Back In NYC which doesn't work for at all.

Of course there is an argument to say that this is the ultimate prog fest. From the sleeve design and the nutty concept to one of the most extensive collections of forever changing time signatures, to paraphrase Spinal Tap's David St Hubbins; there is possibly no other album which is 'none more prog.' If this is case, why am I complaining? This is a prog rock blog after all.

As I have mentioned before in other reviews, it can take years and years for some albums to click. I also stated that I had to buy three copies of Foxtrot and wait for twenty five years to pass before I moved from an initial not inconsiderable dislike of the album to its present status as one of my top ten albums. I really hope that Lamb one day reveals a magnificence to me in the same way that Foxtrot did.

Two final points.

Firstly, I am currently listening to the intro to Carpet Crawlers which is utterly wonderful. This gives me great hope that more greatness will follow.

Secondly, I mentioned earlier that following my first listen to Lamb, I put it, Trepass, Nursery Cryme and Foxtrot away for a quarter of a century. When I rebuilt my Genesis collection, I redressed my original omission of Selling England By The Pound, having skipped right past it from Foxtrot to Lamb first time around. Had I not made that omission, I have no doubt that my appreciation of all of these albums would have changed overnight. Selling England By The Pound is the album I would now urge any aspiring Genesis fan to start with, so effectively has it intoxicated me. But, more of that later.