The album marked a shift in the band's sound, mixing elements of their progressive rock roots with more accessible material, and Collins contributing to more of the group's songwriting.

[6] The trio were confident they could carry on, as they had formed the backbone of several Genesis classics, including the "Apocalypse in 9/8" section of "Supper's Ready", the instrumental part of "The Cinema Show" and the basics of A Trick of the Tail (written while Hackett was working on his first solo album).

[10][7] Banks noticed recording as a three-member band was an easier and more pleasurable experience than before as each member had a clearly defined role, which reduced the risk of personnel clashes along the way.

[11] Collins later thought the album lacked "rich, jazzy pieces" like "Los Endos" from A Trick of the Tail with its merging of rhythm and melody,[15] but he could not contribute such ideas as it was difficult to play the drums in his flat in Ealing with his wife and two children.

[4] The motivation for this was to enable more musical ideas to be put on a single album, and to act as a response to the newly emerging punk rock and new wave scenes, where short and concise songs were standard.

[7] Collins recognised how this decision gave the impression that Genesis was aiming to become "a singles band" that prioritised commercial success over artistic credibility, but maintained that the new material remained "fundamentally the same".

Thompson found its more complex time signature difficult to reproduce on stage at first as Collins could not explain the riff and rhythm which Rutherford noted merely "added to the confusion".

[8] The band had originally planned to develop and arrange Banks's song "Undertow" further, but its basic track of guitar, drums and piano, coupled with its simple chorus, was strong enough to remain intact.

Banks plays a Yamaha electric grand piano on the track which also incorporates voice loops made by the band that were kept "low-key and subtle" in the final mix.

[10] For "Snowbound", Collins originally recorded his drum part at a considerably faster pace before the group decided to slow it down in order to fit the style of the song.

[10] Collins and Rutherford described it as a romantic song, with its lyrics about a man who wears a snowman outfit to hide from people but while inside, becomes paranoid and finds he cannot get out.

[8] While Banks was writing "Burning Rope", he decided to shorten the track rather than stretch its arrangements into an extended piece as he wished to avoid repeating himself and drawing comparisons to his ten-minute "One for the Vine" from Wind & Wuthering.

[21] It features a lead guitar solo that Rutherford found was a challenge to produce in the wake of Hackett's departure; he was pleased with the final result and called it his best on the album.

Once the basic tracks had been recorded, the group were unsure on how to finish the song and sought more instrumental parts to complete it, including a string sound Banks played on a Polymoog.

[23] Hentschel was dismissive of the song, but prepared an initial mix and presented it to the staff at Atlantic Records, who recognised it as a potential hit single for the band.

[26] The album was considered a commercial breakthrough for Genesis, as it brought in sufficiently large audiences to be able to make a profit from touring, which before then had always run at a loss.

[34] In an April 1978 review for Melody Maker, reporter Chris Welch praised the album as "strong, confident" that is "as good as any they have made in the band's post-Gabriel years".

Welch noted the songs have "a sense of purpose" and come with "a remarkably powerful sound", and picked "Ballad Of Big" as his favourite track.

[41] Gary Mullinax for The Morning News thought the album sounded little different to Wind & Wuthering and noted the dominance of Banks's keyboards over Rutherford's guitars, with "the same dreamy wall-of-sound music with the same high-pitched vocals" from Collins.

He concluded that Genesis succeed at points on the album but thought many songs on it fail to go anywhere, "blending into one another like some sort of hip musak".

The album, he thought, has "hard, almost ominous" tracks like "Down And Out" and "softer, more melodic" ones like "Say It's Alright Joe", all of which create "a magical, mystical sound that sets them apart from the numerous similar but usually inferior European art-rock ensembles".

"[36] In Crawdaddy, Michael Bloom found Banks's arrangements and keyboard sounds poor, saying the melodies tend to "practically vanish" and "slip through your fingers".

[45] In his review for Rolling Stone, he panned Hackett's then-current album Please Don't Touch!, but also said that his ex-band fared even worse, concluding that "this contemptible opus is but the palest shadow of the group's earlier accomplishments.

In The Rolling Stone Album Guide, J. D. Considine deemed it "a genuine pop breakthrough" that "does hone the playing so that there's less empty flash and wasted energy",[39] while MusicHound Rock (1996) said it "put Genesis on the radio with 'Follow You, Follow Me' but lacked the meaty songcraft and ambitious arrangements of its predecessors".

[1] The group needed an additional touring member to cover all the material, but Rutherford only wanted to play lead guitar on the new songs from ...And Then There Were Three... and return to bass and twelve-string for everything else.

[29] "The Fountain Of Salmacis", the closing track from 1971's Nursery Cryme was reintroduced into the live set, so Stuermer could take a song with a distinctive Hackett solo and put his own stamp on it.