Abacab

Untitled

Abacab is the eleventh studio album by British band Genesis, released in 1981.

Overview

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. The lyrical content is also identifiable as woe:

Me and Sarah Jane,
We had it coming
All along,
Walking down the streets,
And finding nothing is the same,
And now the city lights are dimming one by one,
It costs too much money to keep them all on.

Parts of this album lean toward the nihilistic, with "Dodo's" references to 'big noise, black smoke' as a clear indication that the band was shying away from the incredibly personal introspection of 'Duke', and had returned to a more existential bent. That said, in contrast to more refined, 'poetic' approaches to these issues during the late 70's, by "Abacab" there is a more abrasive, punk-inflected sensibility to the lyrics, favoring cut-up collage to the baroque stylings of the earlier years. Take for example the following lyric (also from "Dodo"):

Caretaker
horror movie
Only one eye, only needs one boot
Sweet lady, she knows she looks good
Vacuum coming for the bright and the brute.

While the album is often cited as a central album in terms of the stylistic shift, many have also noted that it is incredibly inconsistent in terms of overall quality. Stronger material that had been left off of Abacab was soon issued on the 3 X 3 EP, which broke the top ten of the UK singles chart, on the strength of the song "Paperlate."

Track listing

All songs by Tony Banks/Phil Collins/Mike Rutherford, except where noted.

1. "Abacab" – 7:02
2. "No Reply At All" – 4:40
3. "Me And Sarah Jane" (Tony Banks) – 6:00
4. "Keep It Dark" – 4:32
5. "Dodo/Lurker" – 7:30
6. "Who Dunnit?" – 3:23
7. "Man On The Corner" (Phil Collins) – 4:27
8. "Like It Or Not" (Mike Rutherford) – 4:57
9. "Another Record" – 4:29

2007 SACD/DVD Remaster

This will be released in the US and Canada as part of the Genesis : 1976-1981 box set on May 1, 2007.

• Disc 1 is a hybrid SACD/CD with a multi-channel SACD layer. In the US and Canada this will be a normal CD without SACD capabilities. The track listing will be the same as the original - see below for details.
• Disc 2 is a DVD which includes "Abacab" in DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 and PCM Stereo plus bonus material

1. Promotional videos: Abacab, No Reply At All, Keep It Dark, Man On The Corner
2. Reissues Interview 2007
3. World Tour Programme 1981 (15 page gallery)

References

In 1992, when the video game Mortal Kombat was ported to the Sega Genesis, the development team made a secret code in the game that spelled out "Abacab", a deliberate reference to one of Ed Boon's favorite bands which shared the same name as the console at hand.

Personnel

• Phil Collins - drums, percussion, all vocals
• Tony Banks - keyboards,
• Mike Rutherford - bass, guitars

• Engineered by Hugh Padgham
• Cover by Bill Smith

Additional personnel

• EWF Horns - horns