Foxtrot

1	Watcher of the Skies 7:19
2	Time Table 4:40
3	Get 'Em out by Friday 8:35
4	Can-Utility and the Coastliners 5:43
5	Horizon's 1:38
6	Supper's Ready 22:58

Barnes & Noble

Although better known for their platinum-selling pop of the 1980s, Genesis in 1972 were a prog-rock band struggling to be heard. Early that year the band were saved from the brink of oblivion when their third album, Nursery Cryme, became a hit in Italy. So this time, Genesis set out to make their most balanced, ambitious, and artistically successful album -- the one the band forever after felt it had to top. Opening with an eerie, drawn-out Mellotron solo that announces the "Watcher of the Skies" and closing with the triumphant strains of the 23-minute epic suite, "Supper's Ready," Foxtrot makes a strong case for the surreal theater-rock Genesis was developing in the early '70s. Orchestral keyboards dominate amid a variety of textures, but Steve Hackett's bizarre, singing guitar sounds hold their ground throughout, and Peter Gabriel's surreal lyrics and idiosyncratic voice lend the band the personality that burned itself into people's memory. Ian McGrath

All Music Guide

Foxtrot is where Genesis began to pull all of its varied inspirations into a cohesive sound -- which doesn't necessarily mean that the album is streamlined, for this is a group that always was grandiose even when they were cohesive, or even when they rocked, which they truly do for the first time here. Indeed, the startling thing about the opening "Watcher of the Skies" is that it's the first time that Genesis attacked like a rock band, playing with a visceral power. There's might and majesty here, and it, along with "Get 'Em Out by Friday," is the truest sign that Genesis has grown muscle without abandoning the whimsy. Certainly, they've rarely sounded as fantastical or odd as they do on the epic 22-minute closer "Supper's Ready," a nearly side-long suite that remains one of the group's signature moments. It ebbs, flows, teases, and taunts, see-sawing between coiled instrumental attacks and delicate pastoral fairy tales. If Peter Gabriel remained a rather inscrutable lyricist, his gift for imagery is abundant, as there are passages throughout the album that are hauntingly evocative in their precious prose. But what impresses most about Foxtrot is how that precociousness is delivered with pure musical force. This is the rare art-rock album that excels at both the art and the rock, and it's a pinnacle of the genre (and decade) because of it. Stephen Thomas Erlewine