Musical box is from the album nursery crime released in 1971 with the classic genesis line up ( Gabriel, Banks, Hackett, Collins, and Rutherford).
It starts with gentle sounds of acoustic guitars, the quiet, peaceful, almost pastoral beginning leads to a harsh and dark, yet atmospheric section that gradually intensifies before it returns to the quiet of the beginning- for a short time! The whole piece never settles into one groove , due to repeated time changes…The dynamic music ends with explosion of emotions paralleling the story itself. Phil Collins’ massively powerful drumming takes the song to higher level with the extra help of Gabriel’s bass drum.
Lyrically, as Gabriel has described it: The piece is a surrealistic story of ” Victoriana world, controlled English mental landscape under which festers violence and sex…”
