A CURIOUS FEELING

I heard this album recently. It is fairly similar in tone with 'And then there were three'. The singer, 'Kim Beacon' sounds more like a hard-rock or AOR vocalist than prog vocalist and his harsh singing seems out of place on a quant English-Prog album. However, after a while I warmed to him.

One problem here is the main man is the keyboardist so the vocals don't always get enough presence in the music. They really could be a bit louder. I found that the tone of this album was pretty-much the same from beginning to end, the same wall-of-banksynths. The songs didn't have any strong hooks, but the material does fare well after the half-way point. There is some masterful songwriting and one song has some nice acoustic guitar. The best tracks are 'you', 'somebody elses dream' and 'forever morning'. The feeling in the songs is quite peaceful and easy-listening, as the album-cover might suggest.

One thing about Genesis solo, except for Peter Garbiel, I don't think that they should have ever disintegrated as a band. The band albums, even into the 80's, I think are generally stronger. Peter Gabriel was starting to out-grow the band but the boys fared much better together. I think Tony Banks and Anthony Phillips struggle a lot as solo artists. Tony is an awesome keyboardist but his solo albums leave a lot to be desired.