Steve Hackett
Genesis Revisited Live At The Royal Albert Hall
(Century Media)

If you haven’t seen Steve Hackett in the past few years, you owe it to yourself to see the ex-Genesis guitarist performing choice tunes from his ex-band’s catalog (full albums in fact) as well as his turns across his solo stuff. This Genesis Revisited Live At The Royal Albert Hall is an 18-song collection of one of these concerts the master guitarist performed with his smashing band at that famous UK venue.

Hackett doesn’t really ‘visit’ or recreate the Genesis tunes as much as he ‘reimagines’ them whole, updating with enough color from the original to make any Genesis fan salivate, as much as music-lover enthralled. Here we get all Genesis tunes, faithfully recreated by these stellar players Hackett has had with him now, especially his secret weapon for live appearances, singer Nad Sylvan.

Hackett gets in a good amount of stuff from all across his years with Genesis. He dives back into really old songs, managing a perfect bouncy read of “The Fountain Of Salmacis,” a bunch from The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway and the highlight of this collection, “Supper’s Ready,” a song Hackett/Genesis fans had been aching to hear created live again for a very long time. Sylvan really makes the anthem his own here (not an easy feat considering the amazing Peter Gabriel vocal on the original), and the band is spot-on through the many light and dark changes on this long tune.

The heavy metal riff-jamming and vibrato bar-bending, plus clarinet runs, of “Los Endos,” another great Genesis instrumental, is the perfect high-wire act to end Genesis Revisited Live At The Royal Albert Hall. This is superb playing of wonderful tunes from a master and his band. How can you go wrong?