A good two decades before Radiohead, another group of lads from Oxford started a band that aimed high with their music. Unlike Radiohead, however, Genesis sucked the big one. They sucked even more after Peter Gabriel had the good sense to bugger off, leaving the singing to one Phil Collins. But never mind that balding hack. Soon after, Peter Gabriel recorded his first album, often refered to as "Wet Windshield" since each of his first four albums before So were called Peter Gabriel, and they often identified by their cover art.

Of course, Peter Gabriel hadn't entirely dispensed with the excesses of prog rock until his third album ("Melting Face", heh), but fortunately, unlike Mr Collins, he can write some bloody good songs and had the good sense to get personnel like Robert Fripp and Tony Levin in to help record them. The most well-known cuts from this, "Solsbury Hill" and "Here Comes The Flood" are great of course, and people who enjoyed So and Us and looking for a way in to this one will find it in "Humdrum", which points forward toward his eighties albums. There are a couple pastiches - barbershop quartets? drunken lounge blues? - that grate somewhat, in other places, it's pretty straightforward AOR, as in "Slowburn" and "Modern Love", but Gabriel's voice really does lift the songs. Ringing the LSO in to do a Wagnerian-style intro for "Down The Dolce Vita" before it starts rocking away is silly as all get out, but it works a treat.

And "Moribund, The Burgermeister" just about bent my noodle when I first heard it, it's reason enough to get the album.