A Curious Feeling
	Produced by David Hentschel & Tony Banks
	Released on October 1979
	UK CHART POSITION #21 . . . US CHART POSITION #171
	Find it at GEMM
9124 048 cover [high resolution scan]

A nd then there was A Curious Feeling, released under the Tarot Moon, a watery work unclear in vision. Banks had earlier proven himself to be a complete songwriter (“Burning Rope,” “One for the Vine”), which makes this lackluster concept album a disappointment. The story centers on a young boy who makes an unwitting pact with a dark spirit (presumably) to lose his memory should he ever fall in love. Perhaps taking its cue from Three’s “Undertow,” the album begins with the instrumental “From the Undertow,” in which our strange hero supposedly washes up onshore with no memory of his past. Seven years later, he’s made a decent life for himself, put his forgotten past behind him and, by “A Curious Feeling,” returned to a state of lost innocence. When a new love catches his eye (“You”), the forgetting begins afresh. It’s not a bad concept, but was never fully stitched together. Vocalist Kim Beacon has an unremarkable voice, like Noel McCalla or Pete Hicks, and the arrangements lack the dynamic tension of an “Undertow,” instead sounding like endless variations on “Please Don’t Ask” from Duke. The intricate piano passages, symphonic synthesizers and guitars are partly in line with expectations, yet Banks’ own songs with Genesis were never this prolix and prone to meander. As with Rutherford, Banks arrived a few years late to the prog party with this one, when slow-moving concept albums were long out of fashion. A few tracks (“Lucky Me,” “For A While,” “You”) could work as standalone songs, but the instrumental sections are awfully dry (“The Waters of Lethe” notwithstanding). Smallcreep’s Day wasn’t a great work either, suggesting that both musicians would be better served in Genesis, a point the noble Duke confirmed.

9124 048 back cover	9124 048 lyric sleeve

TRACK LISTING

1. FROM THE UNDERTOW
2. LUCKY ME
3. THE LIE
4. AFTER THE LIE
5. A CURIOUS FEELING
6. FOREVER MORNING
7. YOU
8. SOMEBODY ELSE'S DREAM
9. THE WATERS OF LETHE
10. FOR A WHILE
11. IN THE DARK
    
    All songs written by Tony Banks

CREDITS

TONY BANKS -- keyboards, guitars, basses & percussion
KIM BEACON -- vocals
CHESTER THOMPSON -- drums & percussion
David Hentschel -- engineer
Ainslie Roberts -- cover painting
Hothouse -- design

For more discographies visit...

© 2009 Connolly & Company. All rights reserved.