Duke

 

Duke was released in 1980

Track Listing:

1. Behind the Lines

2. Duchess

3. Guide Vocal

4. Man of Our Times

5. Misunderstanding

6. Heathaze

7. Turn It On Again

8. Alone Tonight

9. Cul-de-sac

10. Please Don't Ask

11. Duke's Travels

12. Duke's End

Genre: Pop 

And Genesis are back after a very short hiatus.  Banks and Rutherford both put out solo records before this and were mostly out of ideas when it came time to write.  So the bands brilliant idea was to each put up 2 songs to work on, and then write a few more in studio.

The result is an interesting mix of songs that are either loosely connected (like the opening three) or just kind of show up (like the rest of the album).

A big issue is they haven't really learned how to write pop consistently yet.  They hit it big with Follow You Follow Me from their last album, and they have a couple here, Misunderstanding mainly, but more often than not they just miss the mark (looking at you Man of Our Times).  Maybe they were afraid to take the plunge? Maybe its just Rutherford and Banks not being good at song writing?

This does seem to be their final step from prog into pop. There's still prog flashes with songs like Duke's Travels, but that feels more like a concession to older fans rather than a full commitment to continuing their prog style.  It's not even well done, it feels like they tried to stretch a 3 minute song to almost 9 minutes to trick prog fans into thinking they're still writing prog. 

But, overall this album is just boring.  Most of the songs plod along (Please Don't Ask, Alone Tonight, ...).  They're not BAD, but they just don't go anywhere.  It's clear they decided they wanted to write an album but had no ideas left.

1 green and 3 red, this album isn't bad nor good, it just kind of exists.  They clearly want to move into pop but just aren't ready to abandon their long time fans apparently.

3/5