The Last Domino (2021)
1. Duke's End
2. Turn it On Again
3. Mama
4. Land of Confusion
5. Home By the Sea
6. Second Home By the Sea
7. Fading Lights
8. The Cinema Show
9. Afterglow
10.Hold on My Heart
11.Jesus He Knows Me
12.That's All
13.The Lamb Lies Down on Braodway
14.In Too Deep
15.Follow You Follow Me
16.Duchess
17.No Son of Mine
18.Firth of Fifth
19.I Know What I Like
20.Domino
21.Throwing it All Away
22.Tonight, Tonight, Tonight
23.Invisible Touch
24.I Can't Dance
25.Dancing with the Moonlit Knight
26.The Carpet Crawlers
27.Abacab
Of all the curious releases in the Genesis discography—and there are a few—The Last Domino? may be the most bewildering. Released in conjunction with the band’s 2021–22 farewell tour, it is not, as the title might suggest, a live album documenting the tour’s performances. Nor is it a career retrospective in the traditional sense. Instead, it presents itself as a sort of “companion piece,” a two-disc compilation consisting of studio recordings of the songs featured in the reunion setlist. One is left to wonder exactly who this is for.
The tour itself, to be fair, was met with a largely warm reception. Despite Phil Collins’ obvious physical limitations—he performed seated throughout due to health issues—the shows were reportedly well-executed, with strong support from Nic Collins on drums and the ever-reliable Daryl Stuermer on guitar. For many fans, simply seeing the core trio of Collins, Banks, and Rutherford on stage again was enough. In that context, a live release would have been a fitting, even poignant, memento.
Instead, what we have is a strangely antiseptic gesture: a shuffled playlist of familiar studio versions, gathered under a title that implies finality but delivers little that feels definitive. The material itself, of course, is unimpeachable—these are among Genesis’s most enduring tracks, from Duke and Invisible Touch through to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway and Selling England by the Pound. But the sequencing is jarring. Rather than presenting the tracks in chronological order—a necessity, one would think, for a band whose evolution is so stylistically pronounced—the songs are arranged to mirror the tour’s setlist. The result is a sonic zigzag through decades of musical change: the synth-driven pop of the late ’80s rubs shoulders with pastoral epics from the early ’70s, and the cohesion suffers accordingly.
There’s nothing here that hasn’t been heard before, and nothing—apart from its packaging and context—that couldn’t be assembled via any existing streaming playlist. One imagines this release was intended as an accessible souvenir, a kind of musical pamphlet to accompany the farewell tour program. In that regard, it functions adequately. But as a standalone product, The Last Domino? feels rather like a missed opportunity.
A live album—particularly given the unexpected emotional weight of the tour—would have held far greater significance. Even a properly sequenced anthology might have offered more insight into the arc of the band’s formidable catalogue. Instead, we’re left with a product that feels curiously half-formed: not quite a hits collection, not quite a tour document, and not especially essential.
Of course, the songs themselves remain brilliant. But here, they play like echoes without a voice, shadows without the stage. The Last Domino? is quite the misstep, basically just a shrug. An epilogue that forgot to bring the final page, and mostly highly unnecessary.
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