Selling England by the Pound (1973)

Artist: Genesis
Release Year: 1973

Rating: 9/10

Track Listing: 1) Dancing with the Moonlit Knight; 2) I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe); 3) Firth of Fifth; 4) More Fool Me; 5) The Battle of Epping Forest; 6) After the Ordeal; 7) The Cinema Show; 8) Aisle of Plenty.

"Can you tell me where my country lies?"  The thesis statement of this album is, I suppose, a parallel to that of The Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society: that the quaint and jolly old England of yesteryear has been ravaged and eviscerated by the monolith of bland modernity. As a non-Englishman, I cannot evaluate this statement personally, but I can express my gratitude that this album doesn't detour from the music to preach at us the way other concept albums have.  Good thing, too, because Selling England is probably the best thing Genesis ever did.

The opening "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight" is every bit as epic and triumphant as the medieval heroes of old it intends to portray, yet with a portentous feeling for what's to come.  I could go on for at least a few paragraphs about this track, but instead I'm going to point out my favorite bits and hope that that will suffice:

1.  At 1:45, Gabriel's bleating vibrato on "you don't give a da-aa-amn".  

2. At 2:05 - 2:23, Phil's inventive, off-kilter drumming to contrast Peter's rising vocals.  

3. Around 3:07, Steve Hackett's guitar solo, which evokes a bewildering march of simultaneous progress and decay , followed immediately by a wordless lamentation of the "new England" that is then illustrated by the "fat old lady outside the saloon".  

4.  At 4:38, the repeat of the chorus with the different lyric, "with a twist of the world we go", implying an unstoppable march of time much too large for the heroes of old to resist.  

5.  At 6:15, the four-note phrase that is repeated until the end of the song, like a delicate leaf floating to earth, with the strings swelling gently behind it.  Maybe a bit too long, but only on a bad day.

"I Know What I Like" may be a harbinger of the pop days to come, but it's fortunately accented with both Rutherford's rubbery bass lines and Lord Phil's insanely fun drumming.  And when the ecstatic "YEEAHH!" brings us into the final chorus, followed by the declaration that "you can tell me by the way I walk", we're just begging for a smug little mic-drop moment, which we get with that tooting recorder in the coda.

Then we come to "Firth of Fifth", possibly my favorite Genesis song in spite of the terrible lyrics.  That classical piano intro is a thing of magnificent majesty…why couldn't Tony Banks play like this more often?  Then we have some rudimentary, hymn-like verses, a mysterious, satyr-like flute solo, a shimmering synth breakdown, an achingly sublime guitar solo-- overflowing with all sorts of bends and satisfying trills and longing sustains, as if searching for something we know must remain out of reach-- and it all ends with a tinkling reprise of the intro, suggesting a sparkling river flowing away under a bright sun.  Such majesty and beauty, yet with that cloud of foreboding over it all the time, this is the very zenith: a place that the band would never reach again.

The rest of the album is mostly great, just not as stellar as these first three songs.  "More Fool Me" is a nice little ballad that allows Phil to the mic for the first time (foreshadowing!).  Then, "The Battle of Epping Forest" is fun in places, with Gabriel taking on a load of characters in a surreal turf war between a couple of gangs.  But although it starts out strong, it's ultimately too gimmicky and all-over-the-place for me to love it.  I don't need the play-by-play narration of something like this through a dozen different sections.  But at least they fit together well enough, and the satirical humor makes the verbosity worthwhile-- listen to the story of the accountants keeping track of the carnage, for instance.  So much to be impressed by here, yet I just find it too long, which is a real shame.

"After the Ordeal" is a nice instrumental that allows us to breathe after the chaos of the "Battle", which is critical before the delicate "Cinema Show".   After the mundane lyrics about young lovers, this one actually becomes similar to "Firth of Fifth" somewhere in its plaintive solos and expansion to "greater" themes.  "Take a little trip back with Father Tiresias", indeed!  But I'm glad to note, after the transcendent cascades of choral voices and synth breakdowns and guitar wizardry and even more of Phil's dizzying, outstanding drumming, they didn't return to the "everyman" theme of the verse at the end.  We're too far gone into the mystical now, and there's no turning back.  Not until we awaken into what England has become, that is.  

Speaking of which, "Aisle of Plenty" wraps things up on a bleak note, with that ironic reprise of "Moonlit Knight" paved over with the mad raving of supermarket price tags.  Who'd have predicted Genesis would wrap up a social statement with less optimism than Pink Floyd did on Animals?  

My usual complaints about Genesis do not apply to this album.  Nowhere on here do I feel the need for more interesting playing to spice up the longer passages, because everything is so thrilling beginning to end.  This is how prog should be done, and it's too bad that the wheels would start to come loose again not long after.  Maybe it should get a ten...I haven't decided yet.