#218/1363
June 2 1986
Genesis
Invisible Touch
Genre: Rock
4 out of 5
Highlights:
Invisible Touch
Tonight, Tonight, Tonight
Land of Confusion
From my review ten years ago:
I’m sorry if this is lazy reviewing but I actually reread my old review and nothing has changed.
I have not changed my opinion one bit. Also, I’m very under the weather as I write this.
“Well, well, well. We are deep into that 80s sound now, huh? Where everything sounds like a montage from an urban comedy ala Working Girl or About Last Night or Tootsie or St. Elmo's Fire or White Knights......
This was one of THOSE albums in the era. The only song not released as a single was the instrumenta; track. This album had no less than 6 singles AND the 10 minute opus, Domino, charted anyway. That might have had something to with the two halves of it released as a pair of b-sides.
I'm going to give some props to the guys here. Not for the music, as that's pretty much by the numbers by now. No, for actually letting Tony Banks have some say in the songs. Hang on a sec. I know he's the guiding force behind the Mama band. Listen to that single. It could have fallen off No Jacket Required, easy. Or even Mike + the Mechanics. Its the flourishes that make it all geneside. That's a song that is a ready made top forty hit. And it was. Such a sad time for music. (When is pop music not sad, though?)
The second track is actually a redeemer in a way. It's the band channeling their inner Gabriel. Latter day Gabriel. “Tonight, tonight, tonight” is somewhere between his work and “In the Air...” Moody, redolent and ominous. It's a gigantic epic and it really works. More and more I am beginning to understand just how omnipresent and affecting Genesis was on the cultural landscape in that decade.
While we all remember the “Spitting Image” puppet video for “Land of Confusion”, it's actually not a half bad song. These guys are more socially conscious and also very adept at what they do. I like this song. I always have.
The whole first half of this record were singles. So, 86 was also the year of Genesis. “In Too Deep” was also part of the musical landscape. It was impossible to get away from. It wouldn't get you laid, even though it sort of promised to.
If you took a Lamb Lies era Genesis fan, put him/her in a box and sent them to the future 20 years and played this song, they would laugh in your face as you told them who it was, so far removed from where this band started....
The mania of “Anything She Does” draws me in in ways that other Tony Banks creations don't, usually leaving me cold. But, it's immediate as anything from the era.
“Domino” is a return to Genesis of old, in a way. It's a sprawling, mythological tale. But, without the crazy time signature changes that marked the old Genesis, its just a long disco epic.
Even though “Throwing it All Away” might as well be a Phil Collins solo track, by this point in the record, I'm kind of won over. So, it really doesn't bother me. And it's kind of catchy.
Invisible Touch is a solid record. Much more accessible than the previous one, probably because the band has decided that MOR is where they wanna live. I can see why this was a hit. “
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