The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974)

Another rock opera, and I must now confess a predilection, guilty and otherwise, for the gentle, heady, prog-inflected bombast of Genesis during the period when Peter Gabriel was participating in the adventure (and incidentally teaching Phil Collins how to sing, for which I may yet never forgive him). All bursting with English faerie lore, spritely spirit, and swoony orchestrations, the constructions are often lovely to behold, and certainly a comfort to live with. I enjoy them most when it's winter and there is snow on the ground, which I suppose must say more than I'd like to intend about the substance of their music (and no, I'm not in jacket and slippers smoking a pipe in this picture, or at least not a calabash). The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, perhaps because of its throughline (as weak as any of these rock operas), perhaps because set in New York City and starring a Latino, perhaps because Brian Eno is involved, perhaps because it marks the end of Gabriel's association, or perhaps just by some good fortune of timing, an accident of consensus, somehow seems to be the one album of theirs that bears the most enduring significance. But that's something you'd have to decide for yourself. To me, it's a good way in if you plan on any travel with these guys.