After Steve Hackett left Genesis, the band changed significantly. This change ultimately proved to be quite lucrative, as progressive pop Genesis outsold progressive rock Genesis by a wide margin. However, save for a few excellent tracks, they never fully recovered from Hackett’s departure musically in my opinion. Having said that, there is one album Genesis made as a trio that I think still ranks among their best works and that would be 1980’s ‘Duke’. The album successfully bridges the gap between Genesis’ progressive rock roots and their later pop sound and contains some of the best performances ever to be recorded by the musicians involved.

When Mike Rutherford took over guitar duties for Genesis, the band’s guitar parts were notably simplified. Also, Rutherford has a significantly brighter guitar sound than Hackett, that works incredibly well with the loud, blaring synths that Tony Banks at times used on ‘Duke’. Phil Collins really came into his own as a lead singer on ‘Duke’, delivering what are without a doubt the most powerful performances he recorded up until then. But the best thing about ‘Duke’ is that the songs just work. Especially the songs Collins, Rutherford and Banks wrote together are nothing short of excellent.

One of the brilliant ideas on ‘Duke’ is to split up the multi-part suite they had written rather than sticking them all together. Because of this, ‘Duke’ is infinitely more dynamic than it would have been if it was one side suite, one side solo compositions. Also, it allowed tracks like the fantastic poprocker ‘Turn It On Again’ to be released as singles. Admittedly, the suite tracks are generally my favorites, with opening track ‘Behind The Lines’ and the largely instrumental diptych of ‘Duke’s Travels’ and ‘Duke’s End’ in particular simply feeling like prog Genesis evolving into a new decade.

The folky leanings of the band’s seventies work had completely disappeared from ‘Duke’, but there is enough spirited musical interaction to please open-minded fans. Initially, the drum computer rhythm that starts ‘Duchess’ threw me off, but the surprising chord structure, along with Collins’ incredible vocals make the song one of the highlights of the album. The solo compositions are mostly ballads, though ‘Man Of Our Times’ is an expertly arranged prog pop song and ‘Misunderstanding’, despite lacking a truly strong melody, has a cool guitar and bass unison melody that almost makes it Beatle-esque. ‘Cul-De-Sac’ was allegedly most divisive among the band, but it would have not sounded out of place on ‘Wind And Wuthering’ and therefore is just fine with me.

‘Duke’ is not perfect – especially the dull ballad ‘Alone Tonight’ rubs me the wrong way – but it is one of the last albums on which Genesis was truly allowed to stretch out as musicians before becoming a bestselling act with some good, but at times too tightly arranged music. This is probably one of the albums I would play people as evidence of how good Phil Collins was as a drummer. And even though this is one of his best recorded vocal performances, it was especially the instrumental part of ‘Duke’ that impressed me far more than I expected I would by a Hackett-less Genesis album.

Recommended tracks: ‘Turn It On Again’, ‘Behind The Lines’, ‘Duchess’, ‘Duke’s End’