How the Mighty Have Fallen: Genesis

Genesis is a band that held a lot of gems in their catalog. Regardless of whether you prefer the prog-musing of Peter Gabriel led Genesis (reaching it’s peak on Selling England by the Pond) or the pop of Phil Collins led Genesis (reaching it’s peak on Genesis) there is always something to enjoy from their songs. That is unless they are destroyed by synthesizer man Tony Banks.

Calling All Stations is just an atrocious record. After Collins left they replaced him with a man named Ray Wilson. Wilson tries to sing like he is a mix between Gabriel and Collins but instead ends up sounding like George Michaels in a coma. In fact this album could have been okay and not horrible if it had been a George Michael’s album (a bad George Michael’s album but not as disgusting). Instead it is a Genesis album and you find yourself thinking “These are the same guys that did and Watcher of the Skies and Dancing with the Moonlit Knight on the prog side and That’s All and Invisible Touch on the pop side? What the hell happened to them!”

When Gabriel led the band Collins proved himself one of the best drummers on the prog-rock scene. And then, between his work with Gabriel on solo records and with Genesis, Collins proved he could use Drum Machines with out making them generic. On Calling All Stations the drum machines are permanently stuck in 4/4 time. The Hooks of any of the songs (and a few of them could have been loaded with hooks) are all buried under needless atmosphere and electronic noise. I find the song The Dividing Line particularly distasteful. What is this, Kraftwerk? It just doesn’t work.

The title track though is the absolute worst. Generic metal guitar work over generic “atmospheric” synths all backed by a pointless drum beat that just repeats itself over and over. And the lyrics? Well I don’t care about them. I am not gripped enough to sit down and say “ok so what are you trying to say”. Leonard Cohen has some of the lamest produced songs ever written but there is always enough going on that I am interested in getting deeper and eventually letting his lyrics elevate the song. But these songs could have the greatest lyrics ever (I have looked some up and trust me they don’t) but I still would hate them because I can’t get that far into the listening experience.

I talked about Albums that are so bad they are good. Calling All Stations is so bad it is shit bad. While there are a few almost good songs like “Shipwrecked” most are so bad that I heard better songs from the 90’s dance-pop scene…Oh yeah I went there.