Genesis: We Can't Dance (1991)
Tony Banks - Keyboards, Background Vocals
Phil Collins - Lead Vocals, Drums, Percussion
Mike Rutherford - Guitar, Bass, Background Vocals
No Son of Mine – 6:39
Jesus He Knows Me – 4:16
Driving the Last Spike – 10:08
I Can't Dance – 4:01
Never a Time – 3:50
Dreaming While You Sleep – 7:16
Tell Me Why – 4:58
Living Forever – 5:41
Hold on My Heart – 4:37
Way of the World – 5:38
Since I Lost You – 4:09
Fading Lights – 10:16
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I'd pretty much given up on Genesis by this point. It had been years since their last album, but they hadn't done much that I liked in the past ten years or so anyway. I thought that
Abacab was okay, but a letdown after the awesomeness of
Duke. The self-titled album was a half-step back in the right direction, but as mentioned upthread, I eventually found myself content to just listen to Side One and not bother with Side Two at all. After
Invisible Touch, it was pretty clear that the old band was gone.
Invisible Touch was the last album I bought on LP, and as mentioned, it's one of the shortest Genesis albums, if not the shortest (I haven't bothered to check because it's honestly not that important).
Five years later, CDs were the norm. Albums could now be nearly twice as long, but I wasn't thinking about that when I stood in the record store looking at the back of the CD and saw that the latest Genesis album had 12 songs on it. (I've included track times above, but they're not on the CD.) I did some quick math and determined that the average song length was five minutes, tops. CDs are about an hour, right? I didn't even bother buying it. By this time, I'd heard "I Can't Dance" on the radio, and it was catchy, but nothing special. I had every Genesis album up to this point, and figured I'd eventually pick this one up, but there wasn't any hurry.
My next-door neighbor picked it up, and he lent it to me.
We Can't Dance clocks in at 72 minutes and is Genesis' longest single studio album of all. (It was actually released as a double album on vinyl, which I didn't know until today.) There are two songs over 10 minutes long, one over seven, and a couple around six. Okay, so I blew it. The long songs were back. I went and picked up a copy for myself.
Longer songs are not automatically better than shorter ones. I understand that. But in general, if Genesis writes a longer song, it takes its time to unfold. If it's a story-song, it goes through numerous changes out of necessity, and probably is intercut with instrumental passages. It may not be prog, but it will at the very least be more interesting than a five-minute pop song. I just like longer songs because there's more to them. The ideas are more fully explored. I feel like they're put more into it, and I tend to get more out of it.
You've heard the hits. "No Son of Mine" is catchy, has a great sound, and nonsense lyrics. Okay, the lyrics obviously have some depth to them, but you'll notice that he never specifies what it was that started happening every night, why his mother cried, and why he left. At first I thought that the narrator was being abused, but I'm not so sure. Why is Mom crying? And when he returns to confront his father, his father disowns him for leaving in the first place. I'm not an expert on broken or dysfunctional families, but if his father was doing something, what sense does it make to come down on his son for leaving? I know, we're obviously not dealing with a rational person here, but it seems like we're missing part of the story.
"Jesus He Knows Me" is social commentary, akin to "Illegal Alien" I suppose, and just as annoying. "I Can't Dance" is okay, just nothing special. "Hold On My Heart" got some airplay; most people couldn't tell whether it was Genesis or a Phil Collins solo song.
"Never a Time", "Tell Me Why" and "Way of the World" are basically fillers. They sound fine, and they're not as blatantly pop as most of the songs on
Invisible Touch. There's just not a lot of meat to them, either. I'm not a big fan of social commentary in songs. They're good songs; I just wouldn't go out of my way to hear them.
"Since I Lost You" is, at first glance, another of Phil's "lost love" songs, of which there are actually fewer here on this very long album than there were on the previous, shorter one. But this song actually has some meaning. It was written after the death of Eric Clapton's son Connor. So it's a "lost love" song, just not what you thought. Eric is a good friend of Phil's, and Phil played the song for Eric and got his permission to include the song on the album.
"Driving the Last Spike" is the story of British Rail and the men who built the line. They lived and died digging and cutting the roadbed and laying the track. It's a great story-song that takes its time and tells a great story. I love how the sounds of the hammers and spikes are hidden in the soundtrack. I never noticed them until listening to the album on earphones.
"Dreaming While You Sleep" is amazing. Once again, I think what makes it work is that it doesn't hurry, it doesn't rush. You sense the darkness, you hear the sounds of the road; later, you feel the passage of time, and the guilt and the paranoia building. What makes it scary is that it could happen to any of us. In the blink of an eye, two lives are changed. In the time it takes to realize what has happened, you're a few miles away, and there's an excellent chance that no one saw it. In the time it takes to get to a TV or hear it on the radio, you are certain that no one knows. It's your secret. You know that coming forward would be the right thing to do, but to what purpose? There is nothing you can do to help her. The only thing it would accomplish is the ruining of your life as well. You've gotten away with it. The price? You must live with the guilt for the rest of your life.
"Living Forever" fooled me the first couple of times. It just seemed like another regular song, in the middle of a bunch of regular songs. After a few verses, it goes to a keyboard break, which is cool. It starts off a bit dark, then changes a few times, keeps going, and then the song ends. What? They never come back for a last verse or chorus. A five-and-a-half minute song that's half instrumental? Inconceivable!
See, that's what I loved about Genesis, and what I missed. The songs with nonstandard structures. Longer songs that told a story, or a song that leads into an instrumental. Something different. They'd brought it back.
"Fading Lights" is one of my favorite Genesis songs. As the last song on the last Genesis album, the title and lyrics have a dual meaning. It's not really prog, but it takes its time, and it does have a great instrumental break. The break is another one from the "Cinema Show" or "Duke's Travels" mold, a series of melodies played by Tony on the keyboards while Phil and Mike keep time. It goes through some nice changes, then comes back for a last verse. A beautiful, heartfelt farewell to their fans.
Genesis changed a lot over their career, and while some of their later work polarizes their fans, IMO they went out on a high note.
We Can't Dance is not my favorite Genesis album, but it does have some of my favorite Genesis songs on it. What a great way to end things.
...and then they had to go and spoil it all. Five years later, with no new album in sight, Phil announced that he had officially left the band. Within a year, Mike and Tony found a new singer, and hired some session players to provide drums and percussion (it's actually unclear whether they were considered regular band members), but after a weak album and a disastrous, aborted tour, Genesis officially ended, this time on a low note. Stay tuned...
Topic: Genesis Discography (Read 55041 times)
