Is “The Lamb” Genesis’ most important album?

It was November 22, 1974 when “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway“, the double album that more than any other established the boundaries – questioning them – of Genesis’ identity, who at the time didn’t know they had just released a essential point of reference for progressive rock and beyond. 51 years later, the world-work conceived by Peter Gabriel and sculpted by the collective work of the band still sounds like a narrative and sonic journey, and still exercises that mysterious force which struck everyone from the very first day. Starting from an essential but enigmatic cover, in black and white, far from the fairy-tale images that had characterized the releases up to that point.

With “The Lamb”, Genesis reach the peak of their “theatrical” phase. Peter Gabriel, in full creative ferment and already projected towards an idea of total performanceimagines the story of Rael, a young Puerto Rican man from New York drawn into a labyrinth of visions, nightmares and metamorphoses. A sort of urban and psychedelic odyssey, which brings surrealism, metropolitan news and identity introspection into dialogue. The band, for its part, translates the narrative into one harder and more nervous music compared to previous works: a cauldron of rock, electronic, soul, experimentation and ambient sounds.

Genesis are in a state of grace. This is demonstrated by songs such as “In the Cage”, “Fly on a Windshield”, “Back in NYC” and “The Carpet Crawlers”. The prog canons are no longer enough and, without denying its structural complexity, the five go further. Tony Banks weaves monumental and disturbing keyboard textures, Steve Hackett introduces visionary guitar solutions, Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins build a solid and inventive rhythm section, while Gabriel guides the tale with one of his most successful interpretations.

The tour that follows the release of the album is an event within the event: elaborate sets, iconic costumes, slides projected to tell the story, and a Gabriel increasingly immersed in the role of narrator-performer. But precisely that all-encompassing dimension contributed to a progressive detachment between the frontman and the rest of the group. “The Lamb” is in fact Genesis’ latest work with “The man”: a swansong as fragile as it is titanic.

However, beyond the internal tensions and the legend that arose from it, the group’s sixth studio album continues to speak to us today with a strange emotional immediacy; strange, because the concept it would be anything but immediate: it is complex (both on a narrative and musical level), it is chaotic, intimate, epic and ferociously human.

It’s not said that “The Lamb” is Genesis’ best album, on the contrary; but that it is the work in which Gabriel and his men dared the most, pushing themselves beyond the comfort zone and the boundaries of one’s music, yes. Unrepeatable peaks of beauty and pioneering sound cuescapable of anticipating trends and leaving a mark on history.