Genesis - Abacab1981, Atlantic Recording Corporation
The album marks a sharp stylistic jump, begun by the band on its preceding album Duke, away from their progressive rock style of the 1970s and toward a more radio-friendly pop music sound. Despite the change, the title track, No Reply At All, Keep It Dark and Man on the Corner were all respectable hits as singles and Abacab earned Genesis further fans, with the album hitting UK #1 and US #7, and selling several million copies worldwide and became the band"s first Platinum selling album in the US.
Another noteworthy element of Abacab is drummer Phil Collins"s further refinement of his distinctive drum sound, involving reverberation, noise gates and compression in order to achieve an inordinately loud and authoritative percussive effect. This continued a trend Collins began on his solo hit single In the Air Tonight, as well as the song Intruder from former bandmate Peter Gabriel"s third album.
In addition to pounding rock, Abacab incorporates upbeat, accessible music - an increasingly important element in Genesis"s style at the time. No Reply At All features the Earth, Wind & Fire horn section (as did Collins" solo album Face Value earlier in 1981), and even Dodo/Lurker, whose adventurous lyrics recall traditional Genesis, features a funky rhythm, propelled by Tony Banks"s keyboards.
After years of using outside record producers, Genesis produced Abacab solely by themselves, while limiting further than before the number of solo compositions in favor of the group-written pieces. They also had the expertise of engineer Hugh Padgham, who assisted Collins on Face Value and would continue to work on Genesis and Collins recordings through the end of the decade.
The album takes its name from an early arrangement of the musical parts that make up the title track. Guitarist Mike Rutherford said on the US radio show In the Studio with Redbeard (which spotlighted Duke and Abacab in one episode): There were three bits of music in Abacab, and we referred to them as "section a", "section b", and "section c"... and at different times, they were in different order. We"d start with "section a" and then have "section c"... and at one point in time, it spelled Abacab. On the final version, it"s not that at all, it"s like "Accaabbaac".
Due to its daring shift in style, Abacab is generally considered one of Genesis" most important releases, and was a springboard for future hit albums Genesis and Invisible Touch. The band had been influenced by the punk/new wave revolution in Britain insofar as what they were now offering fans was a set of minimalist, bare, punchy songs, much more in step with the pop charts than Genesis had ever been before. Indeed the compositions are very much a musical companion to the abstract artwork on album"s sleeve. Opening with the hard hitting yet pulsing beat of the title song, nothing could be further from the highly orchestrated work of the mid-seventies.
That said, the complexity of a song like Me and Sarah Jane remained as musically challenging as anything on earlier recordings, even if the sound of the instrumental palette had expanded since the mid-seventies to encompass an innumerably wider array of synthesizers, a more effects-driven sound to Rutherford"s guitars, and the more aggressive sound of Collins" vocals and "gated" drums.
Songs:ABACAB
No Reply At All
Me and Sarah Jane
Keep It Dark
Dodo
Lurker
Who Dunnit?
Man on the Corner
Like it or Not
Another Record
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Genesis - Abacab.
