Genesis – Trespass

The lineup for this album is Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford, Anthony Phillips, and John Mayhew. This is Mayhew’s only album with the band, and Anthony Phillips’ last. It’s the band’s second. I have to say, it casts a spell.

Trespass is the album that would establish Genesis as one of the world’s very best prog bands — it’s the template for much that came later. By the same token, it follows the template set by In The Court of the Crimson King, Time and a Word, and The Least We Can Do is Wave to Each Other while remaining distinctly a Genisis album.

Anthony Phillips is a more Steve Howe-like guitarist that Steve Hackett is. He’s a classical guitarist, which, granted, Hackett also is, on occasion, but of the two, I think Phillips has a slightly more delicate touch. I admire Phillips’s early solo work very much. this album is packed with some very out-front melodic ideas from Phillips, and Tony Banks has a lighter touch. The general aspect of the band is spritelier.

Peter Gabriel is front and center, as stong and evocative a singer and master of ceremonies as anyone could ask for, a great rock performance centerpiece fully realized, with that trademark sweet, honey-and-cigarettes baritone and finely tuned theatrical sense… And he was so young! He was quite fey on those early records, was he not?

The band also feels more balanced than it did later. At least it’s a *different* balance. Later albums would shift the sonics of the band more towards Banks being dominant, and new guitarist Steve Hackett was often treated like a “junior” member of the band. I wonder what a second or a third album by this lineup would have sounded like if Phillips hadn’t become ill and if Mayhew had found his way into the social circle of the band?

I own this one on CD and vinyl. I seem to be moving towards owning multiple copies of certain records. I also seem to be lacking storage space. I will need to address this issue at some near-future point. Something’s gonna have to give.

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