Album Reviews
Like "Misunderstanding" (the best song from the last Genesis LP), Face Value is pop music about personal turmoil: in this case, the dissolution of Collins' marriage. At times, the singer's broken heart is too clearly on his sleeve, and musical missteps abound: the annoying Munchkin-like Vocoder effects in "I'm Not Moving," some rote horn charts, a batch of indistinguishable ballads and a flaccid cover version of the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows."
But Collins hits more often than not, adeptly blending moody keyboard trills and bone-crunching drumbeats in "In the Air Tonight" and shifting with surprising sure-footedness from the Eno-esque repetition of "Droned" through the percussive horn blasts of "Hand in Hand" to the persuasive intimacy of "If Leaving Me Is Easy." Face Value is far less ambitious and important than Gabriel's solo debut, yet it's also unmistakably the most worthy Genesis product since that record.
(Posted: Aug 20, 1981)
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- In The Air Tonight
- This Must Be Love
- Behind The Lines
- The Roof Is Leaking
- Droned
- Hand In Hand
- I Missed Again
- You Know What I Mean
- Thunder And Lightning
- I'm Not Moving
- If Leaving Me Is Easy
- Tommorrow Never Knows
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