A Wind And Wuthering Review

From Circus Magazine issue #158, June 23, 1977.

From Circus Magazine issue #158, June 23, 1977.
by Michael Bloom.

Contrary to the band's own statements, the appeal of Genesis has never been strictly musical. Rather, Genesis tell good stories. They once did so with an incredible single-mindedness-five heads working as one, where each player's contribution either couldn't be separated from the whole or faded into insignificance. The tales that Genesis spun carried the archetypal relevance of primal myths and traveled directly from ear to heart;no listener could misread the pure bitterness of "The Knife", the lonely ominscience of "Watcher of the Skies", the religious ecstasy of "Supper's Ready."

Then, Peter Gabriel left, and the group's cohesiveness was destroyed. Whether his resignation caused the fissures or whether he fled to avoid being swamped in an anti-creative karma, Gabriel suddenly made Genesis a rudderless ship, blown by four unharmonious winds. Tony Banks now tries to hold the original course with increasingly dense keyboard orchestrations and parables. Mike Rutherford pushes in a simpler, more conventional direction. Phil Collins contributes wit and madness bordering on idiocy. Steve hackett, when he asserts himself at all, works in a slashing attack that's almost punkish.

This is not to say that Wind & Wuthering lacks the musical signature of Genesis. But the stories have been set down with too little community and too much compromise. Mostly they don't work. "Eleventh Earl of Mar" at first sounds terrific - all of the dynamics of an earthquake, with some grand organ and bass work - but soon some of the riffs resemble spare parts. The lyrics, drawn from tales of the 18th-century Jacobite Rebellion, never quite make senses either as history or as metaphor. They seem to recount a child's perspective of the war, but there's a lot of counterproductive stage setting and window dressing.

"One for the Vine" is credited to Banks alone (Mar being a collaborative effort), but it suffers from many of the same problems; an unresolved theme, lyrics that too often impede the narrative flow, music effects that confuse the story. "Vine" strives from an awesome statement about the relationship between religion and power (somethng only hinted at in "Can-Utility and the Coastliners" and other early compositions) and the responsibility of the shaman as leader, but the ultimate horror of its conclusion is far too muted.

Banks' "All In a Mouse's Night" is a good cartoon, with some lovely keyboard and guitar arranging, until it grinds into another inappropriate coda. Hackett's "Blood on the Rooftops" (no violence-it's about television) seem fairly typical of his present sulky condition;moody clasical guitars and a tortuous melody. Rutherford's "Your Own Special Way" is awfully trite and appears primed to become the band's first hit single in America.

In the last year or so, there have been four solo projects by members or ex-members of Genesis;Hackett's Tarot fantasia "Voyage of the Acolyte"; Collins' Brand X and their Unorthodox Behaviour;original guitarist Anthony Phillips' "The Geese and the Ghost", produced by Rutherford; and Peter Gabriel's Cryptic Masterpiece. Every one of these albums is better than Wind & Wuthering. Four heads are better than one when they work as one, but these heads aren't-they're squabbling.