Was about to reply with the same but beaten to it! Seconds Out is a great live outing.
If an earlier studio album, I'd start with Selling England by the Pound, like several above.
To my mind Lamb Lies Down just stands up better than Selling England, let alone the likes of Foxtrot. It has an edge and a punch to it that is missing in the early more pastoral stuff. Even though it is that dreaded ‘70s format of a concept double album it is approachable as the songs are fairly short and the instrumental passages just seem more ‘modern’ to me. It has Bank’s best keyboard work on it IMO and the bass playing is really good and edgy at times too.
BTW has anyone heard a decent copy of Trespass - I have an original vinyl, love the songs but the audio quality is pretty poor, wonder if the masters were poor as well?
I’ve no idea how one would get a drum sound as bad as Trespass, Nursery Cryme or Foxtrot if you planed the recording for months. it sounds like Collins is playing some damp cardboard boxes and a washing up bowl with a fish in an airing cupboard. I’m obviously a record dealer so I’ve had several ‘pink scroll’ copies of Trespass and Nursery Cryme pass through, and I’ve still got a 1/1 matrix copy of Foxtrot. They are not good recordings, though the attempts to remaster and improve them only makes them far worse IMO. The remastered CDs from I think the late ‘90s are just hideous. The recordings are what they are and I’d go for bog-standard ‘Hatter’ Charisma label reissues from the mid to late ‘70s myself. Not worth paying out LOLprice for ‘pink scroll’ 1st press on sound quality grounds IMO. Maybe just a little more punch, but the recordings are what they are and can’t be fixed. You can find the same matrixes for a lot less on the Hatter label design.
Selling England is the first reasonably well recorded one, Lamb Lies Down is excellent, as is Trick Of The Tail and Seconds Out, which may even be the best. I have no comment about the others as I’d totally lost interest, though maybe avoid And Then There Were Three on vinyl as it plays for a very long time and IIRC has no dynamic range as a result. I remember buying it when it came out and thinking it was awful (both as an album and sonically), traded it in a couple of weeks later. That was my jumping off point, plus a whole new music was happening at that point and I was approaching the right age to appreciate it.
I still really enjoy Lamb Lies Down now, it is the one out of my small amount remaining Genesis vinyl (Foxtrot, Lamb, Trick, Seconds Out) that comes out for a play most regularly. They have a place and remind me of discovering this music at school as an early teenager (I’d have been 13-14 when Trick Of The Tail came out).
. Things got much better after he left, at least until Abacab 
