When the conceptual album is musically appealing to me I can enjoy it as much as any other sort of work, I admit though that it stands apart in its own right as a different and more demanding kind of artistic work, but must admit too that I'm not a fan of them. I rarely cared for the story behind conceptual albums, and as such I usually miss out on most of the lyrics as well as on part of their thematic relation with the musical lines. That said, I don't know if it is for the straightforwardness of The Lamb as a given, but the fact is that listening to The Lamb these days I found on it again an easy way to make a detour to avoiding all that issue of mine and fully appreciate all those beautiful vocal melodies and other great and heartfelt instrumental lines that always resonated with me. As I explained in detail on a former post, incidentally or not the musical reprises found in The Lamb permeate most of my favourite melodic lines that by their turn are present in more than a half of my favourite tracks as well: TLLDOB, Haiess Heart, Carpet Crawlers, The Lamia, TLDDOB and Riding The Scree. .
I never noticed that sound. It surely is on the master tapes, since it's absent on the remixed version only. Maybe it was added to the final mix tape, threfore it wouldn't be found on the multi-track tapes for the remix, but it wasn't common practice anymore in 1974. It was probably a deliberate choice not to use it on the remix, or they simply forgot it. Poor Rael.
The Light Dies Down. The Lamia bit is Tony's. The Broadway bit is Tony/Pete's. Lyrics are Tony/Mike's. Guess what? Tony thinks it's the best song on the side. It's always been one of my favs. Yes, lyrics are waaaaay less adventurous and prosaic than the average but they work well and I liked the autumnal, weary feel they conveyed. Maybe less so, now, but unfortunately that's true of many things of my youth and more importantly it's just me. - Quotes! I wouldn't too, I wouldn't even know how to. But the guys certainly could have, given more time and thoughts. The Musical Box is more Genesis than we'll ever have these days. And I bet their Lamb show works better than the original had ever done. It's not pointless. It's an unexpected hint of weirdness and I guess it's suppose to make you go a little "WTF?", which is how Rael must feel the moment he catches glimpse of the colony. John is a jerk. But wait, Rael is a jerk too. So... From Hackett's brother's name. Are you kiddin' me? This is SH Forums. We DO mind. Always. Very embarrassing act of revisionism. Maybe somebody-you-know-who did find the effect to be too weak or campy. I can't tell how many times I did listen to the album, never finding it remotely so. It's also one of the few tracks I went to standalone. That's the best bit, yes. Poetic synthesis it is, despite being a different kind of it. Great match for that music passage.
Exactly. That's how I feel when I hear it, like arriving at the colony. I even dare to say that some of the weird sounds are meant to be the slippermen voices in the distance.
The Light Dies Down is my favorite track on side 4. I like how they used the melodies of both songs woven together in a kind of double reprise. It helps to tie the record together musically.
As far as those mood instrumental sections occurring too frequently, keep in mind the splitting up of four album sides. Silent Sorrow is a little sea journey that fades out on that portion of Rael's adventure. Flip it over & he arrives in the twisted Colony, where the music is again exotic (as in Fly, the first time he experienced the "other world"). Kind of like falling asleep in poppies & waking up in Oz. As for Slippermen, I find it mostly tedious because of the jig-like feel. It's a lot of plot advancement, with castration being yet another way to lose one's self. But I do think the keyboard solo defines the future three-man group & shows in half a minute what Tony's composing is all about. Ravine is tense thanks to Mike's frantic mandolin-like strumming. It's the bleak calm before the storm of action that finishes up the album. The Light is a brilliant culmination of the two themes that lead Rael to his moment of truth. This track manages to lyrically & musically evoke deja vu & nostalgia for something you heard just over an hour ago. They somehow pick the perfect tempo & tones to get the "resigned wistful feel" that was mentioned. The Lamb chorus chords sound merely big & introductory on the title track. Here, they become huge & apocalyptic. Those background vocals add such great emotional weight. It's quite cinematic. I dare say the whole album almost rests on this track existing as it does. It then becomes a three part climax: The Light is where the decision is made, The Scree is where the moment of action takes place, & The Rapids is where the epiphany occurs.
I enjoyed your thoughts about the track "TLDDOB". As for The Slippermen, we part company in our taste there. I like that "jig-like" feel you mentioned, especially the variations on it going on in such a smooth way albeit the song's overall complex structure essentialy characterised by its strong time signature dynamics. Good point though about your perception of the future three-man group. .
Riding The Scree He rushes to the cliff and scrambles down the rocks. It takes him a long time to get down to the water, trying to keep up with the current at the same time. As he nears the water's edge he sees John losing strength. We enter here straight from light dies down with a quirky kind of rhythm and some moog? synth coming in. Then we have Hackett doing some volume swells. Banks then answers with a fanfare like melody and this all comes in on top of this quirky little groove they have going on. Then Gabriel basically sings about where he is at, struggling through the rocks trying to save John's life, as he can see that John is wearing down. Then Banks give the fanfare melody another run through. It gives a feeling of triumph against the odds... we then get a fade out.
Scree is an interesting track and another great riff from Tony, especially when the band revisits it after Peter sings "Here I go!" and they all play forcefully for a few bars. However, I feel the lyric section really doesn't gel with the music all that well. The lyrics seem to fight with the music, which actually fits the story line. It seems like a difficult song to execute, with all the weird time signatures going on, but thanks to Phil and his amazing rhythm instincts, it works.
Here I go! Love that bit The 'fanfare' ... used in the Cinema Show section on 3SL ... and gets a disproportionate amount of applause ... added for Tony's ego, I assume. --Geoff
Nope, it's rather an fairly deserved amount of applause directed not only to the "fanfare" bit, but of course also alluding to the brilliance and greatness of all his melodic lines for that track. Don't get me wrong, that "fanfare" clearly stands out in Tony's riffs catalogue, besides being one of his most symphonic-like takes I' ve ever heard from him. Much probably the inspiration he took for his "fanfare" bit and the awesome segue came from some classical stuff he appreciated and(or) admired. This track has always been one of my Lamb's fave, especially for Tony's very inspired synth melodies.
I am way behind here, but it goes without saying that I like all of these songs from The Lamb. I like how The Light Lies Down on Broadway has that "Okay, we are heading for the finish line" vibe, and then all of the songs after it build up nicely to the brilliance that happens with the final song.
"Scree" reminds me a lot of The Cinema Show, except that it's switched around; the long instrumental part with all the arpeggio flourishes comes at the start of the song rather than the end. I don't have a lot to say about this track. As a standalone song I think it would be a bit lacking, but of course it is not standalone and is not meant to be. It fits perfectly as part of the Lamb suite, which much of the time feels more like an extended composition with sections, in the manner of Thick As a brick, rather than a collection of songs.
Listened to the album yesterday with a different perspective after reading all the info and opinions on this thread. It only made me love The Lamb even more!!! It's amazing how dense those songs are both lyrically and musically. It also amazes me the circunstances under which the album was made, it could easily have fell apart. No wonder Gabriel left. His last year with the band was really harsh.
Scree. Tony... (drumroll) ... doesn't like it!. The rhythmic base ("in 13/8 or whatever it was") is Mike's. Tony improvised in 4/4 over it, breaking it every now and then to get to sync. Live it was a mess to do, he kept forgetting about some extra measures and "went along by myself hoping the others would come back". Steve is completely absent from the track. It's a Power Trio composition again.
I'm ambivalent about it. Musically it's fine and yet another trademarked synth rollercoaster. I just don't like that much how it's used. The sequencing, the occasional lyrics and te mismatch between the narrative (where Rael is supposed to be worried, tense, concentrated, with his' brother's life at stake) and the happy-ish uplifting feel of the track. Even lyrically, the self praise (Evel Knievel you got nothing on me) is out of place, doesn't match either the situation or the character. The lyrics try to compensate for this mismatch: If I want John alive, I've got to ditch my fear - take a dive While I've still got my drive to survive. So after the Here I Go! the fanfare reprise seems to be in context. But the fist still wasn't! It's kind of a sloppy attempt to put a patch. Or maybe it's just another case of that "gallows" thing I'm not Brit enough to appreciate. I learned to accept it for what it is ant take what's good in it musically, but from the writing/narrative perspective I see it as little misstep. Which could not be that bad if it was followed by a redeeming ending.
In The Rapids/It In the rapids starts with a really nice acoustic guitar and Gabriel puts down a beautiful melancholy vocal. The Rapids give Rael the impression he is overcome and all he can do is ride them. Isn't that the experience of life? At the end of the Rapids ride he finally catches up to John and we are left with the obscure line "Somethings changed, that's not your face. It's mine - it's mine!" This obviously leaves a lot of things open to interpretation. I really like this track musically a lot. We get a synth wind up and roll into the final song of the album "It". It is a quick tempo track that really moves along, also with a very full sound. The guitars pumping along and the keyboards playing plenty of melodies and a lot of crescendo like sounds. Collins also gets a workout on the drums. The lyrics to It are somewhat ambiguous, mentioning several things through the course of the album and a whole lot of other stuff as well. I guess the statement is that "It" is everything ... not really sure. I don't mind this as an ending. I personally think this is a good way to finish the album off, although from previous comments on the thread I understand most seem disappointed with it, This is a fantastic album, that is lyrically wide open to interpretation, and I wouldn't have it any other way. This album is a real high watermark for the band and it will probably always be looked back upon as a great achievement as it is, no matter what a couple more months may have done for it.
Whilst I really like "It', it sounds sort of out of context to my ears with the music that preceded on this album and therefore is perhaps not the best way to end the album. That said, I absolutely love the live version at the end of 3 Sides Live - it sounds absolutely immense with Buford and Collins double drumming. Hackett's segue guitar solo from Watcher of the Skies to the start of It is emotionally off the scale for me.
