Both Sides (1993)
1.Both Sides of the Story
2.Can't Turn Back the Years
3.Everyday
4.I've Forgotten Everything
5.We're Sons of our Fathers
6.Can't Find My Way
7.Survivors
8.We Fly So Close
9.There's a Place for Us
10.We Wait and We Wonder
11.Please Come Out Tonight
 
Times change and tastes change. The
1990's would not be as kind to
Phil Collins. It didn't help matters when he released this, his first
post-Genesis album, that would be
his weakest effort to date. He sadly never recovered.
You
can't critize the honesty of emotions
here. He was going through his second divorce and what some insiders
described as a mid life crisis, so this
release is very subdued, mellow and often downright depressing. For
whatever reason, he recorded the whole
thing himself, an artistic accomplishment, but that doesn't necessarily
make it a more enjoyable record. The
record sounds as though it's unfinished and needs more polish. Many of
the songs are in excess of six minutes
in length and sound as though they would have sounded a lot better if he
would have shaved a few minutes
of each track and spent a little bit more time refining the
actual melodies.
The brightest point on the release is the first single Both Sides of
the Story. This song, like everything
else on the record, has Phil playing all the instruments and he does do a
good job here. The song is the most radio
friendly piece echoing sentiments of worldwide individual problems. It
doesn't suffer the lame production
value as most of the other songs, but at six and one-half minutes, it's simply too long. It
would have been better had he eliminated 90 seconds or so. The
rest of the album is nothing to brag about. In fact, many of the
songs are not even distinguishable from
one another. We Wait and We Wonder is a good piece (again,
tooooo long) that almost seems to rip off
his former bandmate Peter Gabriel's "Come Talk to Me". He also
seems to rip off Gabriel on Can't Find My Way yet
he doesn't do as impressive of a job. Everyday is a stab at
the conventional syrupy ballad, but it doesn't come anywhere
close to Against All Odds or even Do You
Remember?. Sadly, this song just sort of "sits there".
The rest of the album, as mentioned is a very laborious listen and even
Phil himself would ignore
the songs on subsequent tours. With his personal issues confronting him at the time,
one would hope that this record
would at least exorcise him of the many problems he was having at the
time.
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