Still, if anyone in pop music has come close to making a truly forlorn, misty, and gray soundtrack for Brontë’s work, it is not “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now,” nor is it Charli XCX’s accompanying album to Fennell’s film, nor is it even Kate Bush’s breakout hit. The closest anyone has come to capturing Wuthering Heights is an odd, middle-period Genesis album called Wind and Wuthering.
Somehow, Genesis averted disaster. For years, the English prog-rock band was best known for the theatrics of its frontman Peter Gabriel, though the group’s music was written collaboratively. After Gabriel’s highly publicized departure from the band in 1975, the remaining members regrouped as a quartet and tapped drummer Phil Collins to be its lead vocalist. The band’s first post-Gabriel album, 1976’s A Trick of the Tail, was a surprise success, rebuking any doubt from fans and press that the band couldn’t survive without Gabriel. It landed in the top 3 on the UK album charts, and its tour was “their most successful tour of America ever,” according to contemporaneous press materials.
Eager to follow up Trick, Genesis churned out another record in their first post-Gabriel year. Wind and Wuthering is A Trick of the Tail’s moody sister: it’s lush, dreary, and gloomy. The LP is also Genesis’ last with guitarist Steve Hackett, who felt his contributions were ignored in favor of keyboardist Tony Banks’s expansive, spacey arrangements. The result is a transitional moment in Genesis history, captured directly between the band’s two main eras. The group was not yet the sleek, drum machine-powered juggernauts penning pop hits in the ‘80s, nor were they the high-concept band donning costumes for multi-act live shows. Wind and Wuthering finds them trying to solidify what that new iteration of the band was capable of.
There are explicit references on Wind and Wuthering to Brontë’s work. The album was named after the novel, and its two-part instrumental tracks “Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers…” and “…In That Quiet Earth” directly quote its final line. Colin Elgie’s album artwork is monochromatic, misty, and empty, evocative of the wild moors Brontë’s book is famous for. Some fans consider album-closer “Afterglow” to be sung from the perspective of Heathcliff.
But what makes Wind and Wuthering a surprisingly effective interpretation of Wuthering Heights is not its direct references to the text, but the way Genesis conjures the novel’s spectral setting—its cold winds, empty houses, and lonely rooms. Unintentionally, Genesis stumbled on the feeling of the place. When Gabriel departed the band, he left behind a colossal amount of space in their musical arrangements. His vocals employed accents and different intonations. No matter what he did, he had a magnetism that could be pompous, irritating, and entertaining, sometimes all at once.
Collins was a more direct singer. Rather than try and fill the space that Gabriel left behind, Wind and Wuthering feels cavernous. Three of the nine tracks on the album are instrumentals, and songs like “One for the Vine” or “Eleventh Earl of Mar” contain long, meandering instrumental passages. Its lyrics—entirely absent of any Brontë-related details—are an afterthought. It’s prog-rock without any of the play-acting. The focus here is solely on atmosphere, one that is panoramic and eerie. Banks’ keyboards curl like smoke on “One for the Vine”; his layers of organ blanket “Eleventh Earl of Mar,” like the snow that locks its inhabitants into Wuthering Heights. As is the case for Brontë’s writing, Wind and Wuthering could be unexpectedly tender (“Your Own Special Way”) and violently unpredictable (“…In That Quiet Earth”).
Every musical adaptation of Wuthering Heights falls into the same trap—artists recontextualize Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship into one of pop music’s favorite tropes: unrequited love. On her Wuthering Heights album, Charli adopts an overtly lyrical, metaphor-driven writing style, singing of the cruel “Chains of Love.” Apparently this is a necessity when adapting a Victorian literary classic, though the lyrical method doesn’t suit her nearly as well as BRAT’s directness. On “Wuthering Heights,” Kate Bush assumes Catherine’s perspective, pining for Heathcliff and escaping from the cold. It’s certainly the best song inspirel. This very English, very creaky, and very hollow album conveys well the central feeling of Wuthering Heights: isolation.
Frankly, there’s no reason that Wind and Wuthering, an album made by four music nerds who showed little actual interest in Brontë’s novel, should receive the recognition of “Best Wuthering Heights Soundtrack.” Unlike other adaptations, the band had no intention of actually invoking d by Wuthering Heights, but it also reframes this novel as a story of tortured love. Genesis circumvents the problem of portraying Cathy and Heathcliff by not portraying them at al Wuthering Heights. It just felt right, considering the album’s windy, frozen tone. Perhaps the fact that a band like Genesis made a worthy Wuthering Heights interpretation isn’t a reflection on their robust engagement with the text but as a testament to Brontë’s un-adaptability. For all our fascination with Wuthering Heights, the novel’s incomprehensibility is what makes it so compelling. As text-purists criticize Fennell’s untethered reading of the novel, it begs the question: Can anyone really do this book justice? (Andy Steiner)
