Selling England By The Pound

Description

With Selling England by the Pound, Genesis reaches full maturity and masters composition and production perfectly. The third part of the glorious trilogy of the five-piece Genesis, the album is much sharper than its predecessors. Compared with Nursery Cryme, for example, the sound is much clearer, less cavernous. The band’s experience can be felt in the use of electric guitar, much less awkward than on some earlier tracks. Steve Hackett now masters his effects to perfection, with saturation and whammy blending harmoniously into tortured, virtuosic solos. This is the case in Dancing with the Moonlit Knight or in the long, deeply sensitive solo of Firth of Fifth, considered by many fans to be the best Genesis track. Banks has also gained valuable experience. He has considerably diversified the keyboards on this album. The Hammond organ and acoustic piano are still present, but many synthesizers can be heard, without excess. A striking example is the breathtaking synth solo that closes The Cinema Show, itself a true collective feat of arpeggios and counterpoint. The rhythmic breaks are even more present than on the previous albums, and occur with remarkable speed and precision. Yet the musicians are only 22 to 23 years old. A European success, Selling England by the Pound is the occasion for a tour and a hit with the single I Know What I Like, which in hindsight appears to be the weakest track on the album, though not without charm. Firth of Fifth takes the prize with its magical blend of piano and organ, its flute solo taken up by the guitar, and its flawless construction. Also to be remembered are the rhythmic feat of The Battle of Epping Forest (Phil Collins is simply insane on this track), the Pink Floyd-like drifting moments of After the Ordeal (probably largely due to Steve Hackett), and the exceptional transition between The Cinema Show and Aisle of Plenty. The former suddenly turns into a long synthesizer solo in which Banks gradually shifts the scale until it joins that of the following track, which is none other than a very moving reprise of the album’s first track, Dancing with the Moonlit Knight. This structure (a musical theme reproduced at the beginning and end of the album, the latter introduced by a keyboard fugue) would be used several times on future Genesis albums after Peter Gabriel’s departure. The lyrics become more varied, the band seems thirsty for release and the fairy tales fade behind sharper, more European themes (one easily recognizes the queen of maybes, “the queen of may be...”, ready to hand over her country’s traditions to the merchant world). The Battle of Epping Forest evokes a gang war in Northern Ireland. The whole thing, however, remains well disguised behind symbols and abstraction. Selling England by the Pound is an immaculate album. It is hard to find a flaw in such a perfect picture (too perfect?). Probably one of Genesis’s very best albums. Julien Oeuillet - Copyright 2017 Music Story