No, I’m not abandoning the weekly playlists. I just wanted to try something different! So instead, I’ll be occasionally spotlighting albums that were important to my growth and development as a music appreciator. We’re starting off with 1981’s Face Value, from Genesis drummer and balding guy hero Phil Collins.
Man, this is a weird album. Like, truly strange. The huge drums in that first song, “In the Air Tonight,” obviously need no introduction, as that drum fill is one of the most iconic in music history. But as hypnotic and disturbing as that opening track is, the album gets even stranger from there on out. Collins indulges in blue-eyed soul, ’80s R&B, and . . . I’m honestly not even sure how to describe most of the songs on this album. They don’t seem to belong to any one specific genre, and they borrow from so many musical traditions that it’s hard to pin down exactly what he was trying to accomplish here. It’s like he threw a bunch of stuff at the wall, saw a good chunk of it was sticking, and just said, “let’s go with all of it,” and threw a bunch more random stuff at the wall.
So, after “In the Air Tonight,” the album plays around with that blue-eyed soul that I mentioned earlier for a couple of songs. This is pretty familiar territory for a Phil Collins solo album (or, at least, it will become familiar territory for such an album. This is his first solo outing, after all). “This Must Be Love” wouldn’t sound out of place on an Aaron Neville album from the same time period, honestly, and neither would “Behind the Lines.” They’re solid love songs, slickly produced. He’ll return to this style – with more punch and horns – on “I Missed Again,” another obvious highlight.
But tracks four and five are where Collins seems to go off the pop rails. I described “The Roof is Leaking” on last week’s playlist, where I essentially called it one of the more harrowing songs about homesteading I’d ever heard. And he does all of it with just a piano, a banjo, and a slide guitar. It’s awesome and dark and I kind of love it. This dovetails into “Drone,” which features African-tinged drums and wordless vocals. It sounds like something Pink Floyd would’ve done if they’d tried to make Ummagumma in the ’80s.
“You Know What I Mean” is the sort of ballad that Phil Collins created a whole new career out of singing in the ’80s. It’s all pianos and strings and manages to sound sincere and bittersweet without falling too deep into schmaltz, which is a nifty and difficult trick to pull off. “Thunder and Lightning” is the ’70s Earth, Wind, and Fire hit you never knew Collins had in him. “I’m Not Moving” is funky. That’s the best word to describe it, and it causes me a bit of pain to think of this guy who could have won “most likely to be a Russian taxi driver” in the late ’70s.
The album closes with a Beatles cover, a ballsy move from anyone. He goes with “Tomorrow Never Knows” and shows folks that Ringo ain’t the only one who knows his way around a drum kit. It’s weird and pulsing and almost psychedelic, if just a little too polished to quite fit that style.
It’s a weird pop album, which is pretty fitting for 1981, which I feel was something of a transitional time in pop music. If someone as self-effacing and goofy as Phil Collins could become an adult contemporary superstar back then, anyone could make it. Of course, that also assumes they could write songs as good as the ones that were on Face Value, and that’s a higher bar to clear.
Charlie Cottrell 