Member:
Epilepticgibbon
(Profile)
(All Album Reviews by Epilepticgibbon)
Date:
8/18/2005
Format:
CD (Album)
Even if the name John Hackett doesn't immediately ring any bells you might know his slightly more famous brother Steve Hackett, the man who provided lead guitar for Genesis for six studio albums and much of the 1970s.
Steve is best known for his work with Genesis, as well as a lengthy solo career of music that spans prog rock, classical music and more mainstream pop and rock. During his solo career Steve has often called upon his classically trained flute-playing brother and John has contributed flute to both Steve's classical and prog rock work, though I always assumed that it was the classical stuff he was more comfortable with. It's perhaps slightly odd then that John Hackett finally gets around to releasing his first ever solo album in 2005 and it is, broadly speaking, a collection of rock numbers.
Checking Out Of London is basically an album of rock songs, none of them quite reaching six minutes. Some of them are more obviously proggy, some are slightly more AOR in style, but the overall trend of the album is sort of prog-pop: strong tunes, short songs, fairly straight-forward lyrics, but with familiar progressive rock flourishes and complex instrumental passages that make you think, not surprisingly, of the work of Genesis and the solo stuff of brother Steve.
So, for example, opening track “Late Trains” starts out with a guitar part that immediately reminded me of a Genesis track that Steve played on (“Cinema Show”, I think) and although the rest of the track goes off on a rather different tangent that Genesis mood is still definitely set in my mind.
The Genesis and Steve Hackett themes are not just present in the style of much of the writing because John has also gathered together some familiar names for his band on this album – whilst John himself provides lead vocals on several tracks and also plays lead, acoustic and bass guitar, and occasional keyboards throughout the album, brother Steve provides lead guitar on four of the tracks and even harmonica on “Ego & Id”, long time Steve Hackett collaborator Nick Magnus provides drums and keyboards on all the tracks, while Tony Patterson, the voice of Genesis tribute band Regenesis, contributes his very Gabrielesque vocals to “Dreamtown”, “Ego & Id”, and “Whispers” and provides backing vocals elsewhere throughout the album.
So at times this really does make you think that you're listening to an alternate reality 21st century Genesis, or a missing Steve Hackett album – there's that distinctly English feel to it all: tales of failing public transport, cold winter days, closing down sales, Holiday Inns and relationships destroyed by silence.
But it's not all done in a broadly Genesis style, though – “The Hallway and the Pram”, for example, reminds me more of the effortless classy pop of Prefab Sprout than the symphonic prog sounds of the 1970s.
That may make it sound like an odd mix but really it's not because Genesis always had one eye on intelligent, adult pop music, even before Phil Collins took over as the band's frontman, and John's album just represents another perspective on that mixture of pop and prog styles. It's not the most daring, edgy or experimental album you'll hear all year, and some songs may even be considered to border on the bland but occasionally John does throw in a musical curve-ball, like the hard rock of “Ego & Id”. And overall I have to say that this is a very strong piece of work, full of lovely instrumental moments, good solid songwriting (mainly the result of collaborations between John and Nick Clabburn) and neat production. Although this may be John's first solo rock album, let's hope it isn't his last.
Best tracks: “Late Trains”, “The Hallway and the Pram”, “Fantasy”, “Winter”, “Whispers”.
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