INVISIBLE TOUCH

Well here I am. And to quote the big climax of Tonight, Tonight, Tonight...GET ME OUT OF HERE!. Yes, the archives incorporate a fantastic feature that allows a quick rating on an album with a simple click. Well, with a touch screen device so popular now, like iPads and smart phones, it is even easier. Yes, I accidentally touched Invisible Touch. I assure you, the irony is not lost on me. And this is not the first time. Fortunately, the previous episode involved a band/album that turned out to be a hidden gem when I dove in to avoid having ratings without reviews on my record. But this time, I know what sort of travesty I am heading into. But you know what, I am going to do it anyway.

I have heard a lot of apologist excuses for why this is a good album. "Its one of the best examples of a pop album ever". Well, I don't care. Are we going to start giving successful and efficient totalitarian regimes high scores as well? We all heard the Patrick Bateman monologues about what is so great about 80's Genesis. We all are free to are own tastes, but the attempts at convincing me all come across as psychosis. This was a band that made some of the greatest progressive rock of all-time, now producing the very dross that embodies the horror of 80's popular music. Right from the start, the punchy overly compressed keyboard samples in the title track give me that bile aspirate that the soundtrack to Beverly Hllls Cop always did. And the absurd electronic drums, that were dated before they were ever used, dominate every square inch of this album. How does a guy who played some of the most outrageous beats of the classic prog era play that long drawn out, go no where, section of Domino night after night and not lose his mind? Oh yeah, I forgot, he inflicted it on Chester Thompson for live sets. Even when the songs sounded promising, like The Brazillian, they would go nowhere, just ending up in the same spot they started. And don't get me started about the lifeless ballads. I love a good ballad as much as the next guy, but In Too Deep with its anti-Rhodes-sampled electric piano (it goes along well with anti-mellotron; that punchy orchestra sample that dominated 80's pop, see Owner of a Lonely Heart) is the stuff of nightmares for the hardened progger.

Sorry, not sorry. This is every bit the heap of waste that it was when it came out and I was a thrash-metal head. Nothing has changed through the years and my expanded exposure and deepening tastes. "You're taking it all too far". So apropos . 1 stinking star, because less isn't allowed.