Foxtrot

The band wrote it in the summer of 1972 in a rehearsal space beneath the Una Billings School of Dance in Shepherd's Bush, and recorded it in August 1972 at Island Studios. Bob Potter was the first producer and went uncredited; the engineer Tony Platt was then tried as producer, and Dave Hitchcock produced with John Burns as engineer. Watcher of the Skies opens with a Mellotron the band had bought from King Crimson, and Horizons is a short Hackett guitar solo inspired by the prelude of Bach's first cello suite. Supper's Ready closes the album.

It reached twelve in Britain and one in Italy but did not chart in America, and it was later certified silver in Britain. Paul Whitehead designed the cover, a fox's head on a woman in a red dress, and the band disliked it. Sounds' Jerry Gilbert thought Genesis had almost achieved the perfect album, and Chris Welch of Melody Maker called it a milestone in the group's career. Banks was particularly pleased with it and thought it had no weak tracks. Rolling Stone ranked it fourteenth in a 2015 list of the fifty greatest prog rock albums.