INVISIBLE TOUCH

Though I can't rate it any higher than two stars, I really must come to the defense of this album. The mid-eighties were a bleak period for rock music in general and prog in particular, and this album is as guilty as any of the major complaints of music of this era - populist drivel designed by corporations to feed corporations....the music and accompanying videos as product. Still, even with all the overhype and overplay on MTV and FM radio and those mind-rattlingly irritating synth drums and jumpy keys, the band still delivered an attempt - weak as they may be - at a progressive epic. In the muck of the teenage drivel lie Tonight, Tonight, Tonight on side 1 and Domino on side 2, and it's for these two numbers I'll award the record two (2.4) stars. Tonight stretches out a Dutchess/Behind the Lines-like melody and riff and comfortably ride it out over nine minutes....Domino may not be as consistently strong but includes some proggy thrills over its 10+ minutes. Thought not Genesis classics (perhaps a lower echolon minor classic tag might suffice....after all, how many 8 plus minute Genesis epics do we have for prosterity now that the boys have basically packed it in)....but, the point of this review is to point out how few other even moderately selling bands of the 80s included 10 minute slabs of prog on their albums and to come to the defense of Invisible Touch as a not particularly engrossing Genesis record, but a Genesis record nonetheless.