Tresspass

 

Trespass was released in 1970

Track Listing:

1. Looking For Someone

2. White Mountain

3. Visions of Angels

4. Stagnation 

5. Dusk

6. The Knife

Genre: Progressive Rock

Genesis's second album is fortunately a massive detour from whatever that debut was.  My favorite story about this album is the artwork.  Apparently they hired a guy to design it so he sat in a few sessions and came up with the cover.  Then the band added The Knife to the album and thought the artwork no longer suited it.  So, instead of doing anything about it they just cut it slightly with a knife. Bam, brand new artwork that now somehow fully represents the album.

On to the actual music

Looking for Someone - Its immediately apparent they put actual work into the production here compared to the last one.  The song has energy and depth.  The actual work itself is pretty good.  Very meander-y song (it's prog after all), doesnt stay on any one part too long.  The quiet bits detract from the whole unfortunately.  I think this could be pared back to something a little more concise and it would me an excellent track

White Mountain - I like how this one sounds.  The acoustic guitar pairs well with Gabriel's voice.  Then the electric guitar kicks in underneath.  Great choice. 

Visions of Angels - This one is a bit too soft for me.  The verses feel whispered and the chorus is gone too quick.  They spend too long meandering on this one to keep my attention for nearly 7 minutes.

Stagnation - Fitting title.  This song gets stagnant at like the 1:30 mark and just does nothing for like a solid minute and a half.  The quiet acoustic guitar is fine, but too boring to try and build a whole keyboard/organ solo on.  It finally picks up pace just to drop right back into that frustratingly slow and quiet pace.  And the best part is this is almost 9 minutes long. Every time I think they realize it needs to get more energetic they go straight back to the flute/12 string mess.

Dusk - Another sleepy song that goes nowhere.  The acoustic guitar is good and I like the flute solo, but after 8 minutes of Stagnation we needed something with some bite here.  

The Knife - Oh that organ / guitar interplay is nasty in such a good way.  This is the energy I was looking for since the start of the album.  Finally it sounds like they're trying to make something other than lullabies.  I think they're still a little over ambitious here but this is the best song they've done so far.

So again they spend too much time doing nothing and sounding boring as hell.  BUT, they've shown flashes of what they're capable of.  The Knife is genuinely a great song and shows they can make all the disparate peices of a song mesh together into something cohesive (which they failed utterly to do on Looking for Someone).  They like to lean on slow and quiet to add length to songs and I hate that, they dont do it well and it destroys the flow of the album.

They're getting there.  Two green and two red this album is super hit or miss.  It has potential, but spends too much time being background noise.

3/5