Review: Genesis returns with fresh, and familiar, at Little Caesars Arena

Throughout its nearly 55 years, Genesis has shown itself to be adaptable — through key member changes among other challenges. That resilience was on display again Monday night, Nov. 29, at Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena.

The inability of a frontman to be, well, a frontman would cripple most bands, but in Genesis’ case it allowed the venerable British band to add some fresh to an abundance of familiar for its “The Last Domino?” tour, its first in more than 14 years — note the question mark to those wondering if this is indeed the final farewell.

Neurological issues that forced Phil Collins to retire temporarily back in 2011 have consigned the once-kinetic performer to a cushy leather swivel chair at center stage, walking to it with the help of a cane though his voice and good humor were still intact. He’s also unable to play drums anymore, though his 20-year-old son Nic is a more than capable fill-in, as he proved during his father’s solo tours in 2018 and 2019.

That’s given Genesis a kind of forced opportunity to make some revisions to its live show, which has been as much a part of its legacy as its music. The scale of Monday’s concert was decidedly smaller — up to and including Tony Banks’ streamlined bank of keyboards — but still visually arresting. The main feature was an arenawide video screen that displayed an array of images as well as extreme close-ups — though the automated camera that tracked along the front of the stage was a distraction that sometimes obscured the elder Collins.

A pair of unobtrusive backup singers, meanwhile, gave the nearly two-and-a-half hour show a heretofore missing strength in the harmony department.

The group’s new world order also provided for one of the night’s nicest moments, a mid-show segment where both Collins, Banks, guitarist-bassist Mike Rutherford and longtime touring member Daryl Stuermer all sat down, center stage, for stripped-down renditions of “That’s All,” a smoothed-out and truncated “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” and “Follow You Follow Me.”

And while Genesis definitely missed Collins’ physical presence as well as the double drum segments that were highlights since 1975, Monday’s visit was still a welcome return. In a band context, after all, Banks, Rutherford and Stuermer are as crucial as their more famous compatriot, and that ensemble dynamic was the allure for about 10,000 fans at Little Caesars (dotted by large gaps of empty seats) to fork out for the extremely high-priced tickets.

Genesis deftly straddled the group’s prog rock and pop hits legacy, favoring the former while still touching the latter’s key bases, including “Turn It On Again,” “Land of Confusion,” “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight,” “Invisible Touch” and “I Can’t Dance.”

When you come to a Genesis show, however, it’s for the long instrumental excursions, which the group executed during the “Home By the Sea”/”Second Home By the Sea” and “Domino” suites, a medley that sandwiched pieces of “The Cinema Show,” “Riding the Scree” and “In That Quiet Earth…” between “Fading Lights” and “Afterglow,” “Duchess” and a sampling of “Firth of Fith” that led into “I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe),” during which Collins did a bit of his famed body-bruising tambourine dance from a seated position.

Genesis’ seventh configuration did, however, make an odd and perhaps unintended commentary on its legacy by choosing the beautifully rendered “Throwing It All Away” as the show’s most overtly nostalgic moments. As the group played a song about a squandered relationship, images of cassette and VHS tape spines mixed with historical footage of the band, including former members Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett and longtime second drummer Chester Thompson. Tribute or diss? Likely the former — but not clearly.

After Collins’ a cappella first verse from “Dancing With the Moonlit Knight,” the show finished, as it did in 2007, with “The Carpet Crawlers,” a quiet but powerful rumination from the seminal “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” album. If it was really the last time through, Genesis’ Last Domino left a winning impression, and a reminder that it’s a band that knows how to rise to a challenge.