Four-fifths of the way through a survey of Genesis's members solo shit, seeking ammunition for blamelaying around the good/bad that is that deeply conflicted band, I'd come down evenly on the split of Gabriel/Hackett (heroes) // Collins/Rutherford as (villains). Tiebreaker time! Tony Banks on deck.
Tony comes out on the winning side. Tony is Good Genesis. Full stop.
There's a real tension and progression and melody in his solo debut. His riffs on the closing of After the Lie rival anything Genesis (or anyone!) put out. That's a melody and a half and a half. Goddamn. What a wallop.
More so than any other Genesis members' solo stuff you hear these echoes of the full band's greatest hits. All those signature glows and ripples and rumbles and flickers and flairs. It almost feels like Banks saying "all that shit you loved, that was this guy, right here". Flashes of Genesis's highlights abound, his footprint made evident in retrospect. Especially in that strange twilight, post-Gabriel, and even post-Hackett, Banks's classical sense of structure and melody was the last bullwark against pop depravity. You can hear all these great moments from great albums echoed, now with a clearer credit. "You"'s lushness, goddamn.
But to his credit, you don't really get that flagplanting vibe. This is just what's in Banks's heart, and it's been pouring out all along. Mellotrons and analog buzzes pulse out, cementing Banks as a great underappreciated keyboard master of a seminal era of the instrument's evolution.
And not unlike Gabriel's simmering existentialism, there's a really personal arc here, of wondering about the value of contribution, of confronting ending and death. It's...actually, really, really great.
This's everything you'd want from a solo debut. A purification of statement, a dovetail from the work you loved in the band, crystallized into a form previously impossible.
The peak next-level Genesis take used to be prioritizing Hackett over Gabriel, but put Banks in that list. This shit's legit, a real stroke of genius when it comes to texture, structure, and tone 4.5/5
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