WE CAN'T DANCE

I listen to Selling England by the Pound (1973) and then listen to We Can't Dance and wonder where it all went? Phil Collins works his influence heavily into the last album that he produced with the band for a quality very dissimilar from the original Genesis and therefore not appreciated by many Genesis fans. Julian Vidal mentioned that as a rule all the songs over 5:40min are good. Using this rule that leaves "No Son of Mine", "Driving the Last Spike", "Dreaming while you Sleep", "Living Forever" and "Fading Lights" as genuine songs. However, "No Son of Mine" is a nice and light song on the ears while "Driving the Last Spike" may belong on here as a long song but doesn't belong on Live - The Way We Walk volume two - The Longs (1993). None of it is classical Genesis, neither intellectual sound nor melodic journey. "Dreaming while you Sleep" is not a bad example of how the band have evolved their sound from the Gabriel era to the "Collins cacophony", as I like to humorously put it, but is no way equal to older songs of similar length, "The Fountain of Salmacis", "Watcher of the Skies" and "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight". The tranquil sound of "Fading Lights" does mark the end of Phil's Genesis, but their music had finished a long time earlier.