Genesis – Nursery Cryme (1971)
There's a lovely chap who sells CDs in Harborough Market, and if you buy anything more than a couple, the cost seems to add up to somewhere between half and two-thirds of what conventional arithmetic would suggest. For cash, obviously.
So it's always a pleasure to purchase from him, and he's been particularly good recently on old prog favourites. I can't remember if I ever owned this on vinyl, but I certainly knew it well from teenage years.
While not the first Genesis album, it's the first with the classic Banks, Collins, Gabriel, Hackett, Rutherford line up, which prevailed through the band's successful prog years before the departure of Peter Gabriel to a solo career. I expected it, from memory, to be a little twee, pretentious and over ambitious, and while there is certainly much evidence of this, there's also a lot of strong, powerful rock to enjoy, alongside some gentler, more pastoral excursions.
Opening with The Musical Box, Gabriel's almost unaccompanied vocals seem to back up fears, but it soon hardens up and there's some solid rock music to get the feet tapping. For Absent Friends is a short piece, marking Collins' first vocal outing for the group (five years before he was left with little alternative), also his and Hackett's first joint songwriting foray. The first half ends with the rollicking The Return Of The Giant Hogweed, effectively a musical version of John Wyndham's The Day Of The Triffids, and a fine tale.
The second half is possibly not as strong, Seven Stones being listenable, even mildly enjoyable, but no classic, followed by the whimsy in which the band occasionally indulged in Harold The Barrel, Collins assisting with lyrics and vocals (possibly revisiting his childhood acting role as The Artful Dodger). Harlequin is positively insipid although there's some really nice guitar work, before the grandiose finale The Fountain Of Salmacis, based on a Greek myth thus demonstrating the benefits of a classical English public school education, is actually a decent ending in Genesis' story telling tradition.
It's a more satisfying listen than I'd expected, with the enjoyable rock outweighing the over-pretentious twaddle, and is an album which laid the ground for the next progtastic five years. Perhaps it's my ears, or my limited equipment, but the mix on this CD sounds a little muddy at times, although not enough to spoil things.
4* - a sold start to this line up's prog years
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