Album Review: Phil Collins - Face Value (35th anniversary reissue)

Back when I was on the radio, a million years ago, one of the first things I did with my shift was dedicate an entire hour to Phil Collins.

I mean, I played a lot of Phil Collins (and Genesis) on my show throughout its nearly three year history, but there was a day, early on, when I played a solid hour of Collins’ music.

Growing up in the 1980s, I don’t have the affinity for the prog rock era of Genesis that so many people talk about—I grew up in the era of Invisible Touch, and Collins’ solo joint, No Jacket Required. In fact, of the few records I was able to pilfer from my father’s collection, those are among the list.

Collins has remained relatively quiet (due to health concerns) since he release his Motown covers album in 2010 (which is excellent, by the way.) So imagine my delight at the news that he was undergoing a massive reissue campaign—re-releasing all of his solo albums with updated cover art (big close ups of his face, now, ravaged by time) along with supplemental ephemera included with each.

The first two albums in the Take A Look At Me Now series were slated to be reissued last fall, and then were pushed back until January.

Now the time has come, and my copy of Collins’ solo debut, Face Value has arrived in my hot little hands.

Face Value is best know for a) it’s original cover art (a giant photo of Collins’ face) and b) (more importantly) the incredible accomplishment that is known as “In The Air Tonight,” which is probably one of the greatest songs ever written. It’s dark and visceral—the lyrics allegedly improvised over the drum machine beat and eerie, mournful chord progression. It’s not really about not saving someone from drowning—it’s about what so many of Collins’ albums are about: divorce.

Written as a song cycle around the idea of the dissolution of a marriage, Face Value cuts right to the core with its subject matter, “In The Air Tonight,” aside—just look at the song titles like “If Leaving Me Is Easy,” or “I Missed Again.”

Then there are the lyrics: “Leave me alone with my heart, it’s broken in two, and I’m not thinking too straight. Just leave me alone with my dreams—you’ve already taken everything else,” he sings on “You Know What I Mean.” And before that, there’s the pure heartbreak and devastation of the reserved ballad “The Roof Is Leaking.”

Turning 35 this year, has Face Value aged well? Yes and no. It’s a pure product of its time, and it’s set up to walk a very tight line between the progressive rock background Collins was coming out of with the late 1970s era Genesis, with the pop singer/songwriter he was destined to become.  I mean, the pop hits are already here—the up-tempo funk double shot of “Thunder and Lightening “ and “I’m Not Moving” show that very clearly.

It all certainly sounds a little dated by today’s standards, but Collins’ songwriting knack was a gift right out of the gate, and the quality of the material he was putting out 35 years ago has aged very well—it’s all still incredible, and much more palatable than much of the auto-tuned warbling garbage that passes for “pop” music in 2016.

For all my unabashed love of Phil Collins, Face Value was not an album I owned prior to this reissue—so it’s all new to me. Some of you may already have the original album, so you may be wondering what the draw is here—like, why by an album you may already have bought 35 years ago.

Well, there’s a whole second disc complete with live tracks and demo versions to entice you plunk down your hard earned money for this—and that’s what sure sold me.

Equally comprised of both demo sketches and very vivid live versions of a number of tracks on Face Value (and more) it gives a little bit more depth to the standard album’s material—showing what came before, as well as what arrived after.

As expected, the live version of “In The Air Tonight” that is included in this second disc absolutely slays, stretching itself out to nearly eight minutes, Collins allows the song to grow into something else entirely.

The demos don’t really add or subtract anything from this collection—just slightly aged sounding home recordings of the songs that were later developed. Though hearing the Genesis song “Misunderstanding” with the words replaced with “no no no,” was interesting to say the least.

For some reason, popular culture has yet to embrace the wonder that is Phil Collins the way that they embraced something else from the past—Journey, for example. Journey were, for a long time, not cool at all¹, until “Don’t Stop Believing” was used in the last episode of  “The Sopranos,” and then all of a sudden, everyone became a journey fan.

Does Phil Collins need some kind of “Sopranos” moment for everyone to realize what they’ve been missing? Or is that really what it is going to take? Can’t people just come to this realization on their own—that Phil Collins always was incredible, and will always be incredible.

Hopefully, that’s what this massive reissue series will help instill in a new audience, as well as remind an old audience of why they loved Collins’ music in the first place. Face Value may not be his most pop driven or immediate solo album (that would be No Jacket Required and But Seriously, respectively.) But it still is a solid solo debut that showed an artist stepping out onto his own.

^{1- I mean let’s face it, they still aren’t cool and a lot of Generation Y/Millenials, et. al only really like Journey in a self-aware ironic way.}

Face Value and Both Sides are the first two reissues to be released in the series, and are available now via Warner Brothers. Subsequent reissues will be made available in coming months.