“Wind and Wuthering” is Genesis' eighth album and their last great masterpiece before the band embraced the more commercial sound that would begin with the album “Duke” several years later. It also marked Steve Hackett's last work with the band, as after the subsequent tour, he decided to pursue a solo career due to his diminished influence on the group's decisions and the musical direction that Phil Collins, in particular, wanted to take.
If “Selling England By The Pound” was their most British album and the subsequent “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” their most American offering, this one, in contrast, is the most bucolic and atmospheric of them all. Despite containing thrilling and dynamic moments, it loses some of the essence of one of its defining characteristics: Steve Hackett's guitar work. Unlike the previous, predominantly instrumental "A Trick of the Tail", released in the same year, 1976, but ten months earlier, this album is dominated by nostalgic, dark, and autumnal sounds, contrasting sharply with the vigorous and powerful sound of its predecessor.
As we explore the tracks of "Wind and Wuthering", we encounter the opening track, "Eleventh Earl of Mar", a song that deals with the historical event of the Jacobite rebellion in Scotland, which took place in the eighteenth century. Beyond its interesting narrative, this is one of the album's most powerful tracks, featuring Collins in top form on vocals and Tony Banks's superb keyboard work. The melancholic and atmospheric “One For The Vine” gives way to another relaxed piece, the exquisite “Your Own Special Way”, before the first side of the album closes with the instrumental “Wot Gorilla”, a track tailor-made for Phil Collins and his impressive drumming skills.
The arranged and melodic “All In A Mouse’s Night” already hints at the musical direction Genesis will take from now on, a fact that will be confirmed in the following “...And Then There Were Three”. This is followed by the elaborate and epic “Blood On The Rooftops”, while the next “Unquiet Slumbers For The Sleepers” is the coldest and saddest moment of the album, an instrumental piece that is the interlude to the also instrumental “In That Quiet Earth”, a spectacular, dynamic and progressive track where Hackett's guitar finally appears clearly and concisely, in turn the end of the song links with the atmospheric and Renaissance “Afterglow”, which became one of the great classics of Genesis. After the release of this album, the band embarked on an epic world tour, performing for huge audiences of over one hundred thousand people, from which much of the repertoire that would go on the double live album "Seconds Out", released a year later, was taken.
