Killjoys say: “Genesis without Peter? That’s nothing,” and those who are smart enough say: “And without Steve they’re nothing either!” Guitarist Steve Hackett aside: the duel between Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel is quite clear, at least when looking at these 27 pieces. Gabriel is responsible as composer or singer for only five of them. This poor rate is important because the three remaining Genesis members made the song selection for these greatest hits themselves (in the wake of the museumization of music, we are now increasingly talking about “curated”). The set is also intended to offer a preview of the set list for the upcoming “The Last Domino?” tour, which, unsurprisingly, will not deviate much from the last Genesis tour in 2007. The trio’s last studio album dates back to 1991. And neither Gabriel nor Hackett are scheduled to be guests in 2021.
The hits are as overwhelming as a Phil Collins best-of: “Mama”, “Land Of Confusion”, “Invisible Touch”, “Turn It On Again”, “Jesus He Knows Me”, “That’s All”. But the double album also collects some of those prog rock epics that always sound as if the band had to force themselves to compose them after Gabriel’s departure, or as if only keyboardist Tony Banks had vehemently asked for them: “Domino” , “Fading Lights,” “Home By The Sea/Second Home By The Sea.” The better Phil Collins Genesis songs – and Genesis songs from 1978 onwards are Phil Collins Genesis songs – are the ones under six minutes.
A chronological rather than arbitrary arrangement of the songs, the oldest of which come from the fifth album, “Selling England By The Pound” from 1973, would have shown the development into a pop band a little more clearly. The Peter Gabriel classic “Carpet Crawlers” would still have been a worthy closing piece. Instead, Collins closes the set with “Abacab”: “Do you think I’m to blame?/Tell me, do you think I’m to blame?” (Universal)