ACTING VERY STRANGE

I'm not having a good day so I feel the need to pile on the indefensible ;-) Mike Rutherford of Genesis decided to have a go at lead vocals with Acting Very Strange. It was his second solo with the first being the very good Smallcreeps Day. Now I like some pop / rock (yes I'm a fan of most of Mike and the Mechanics) but the first thing a pop song has to have is a good lead singer. Well, Mike is not it. I remember being warned about this one album, so I waited until I found the vinyl on sale for $1.99. There are a couple of good tunes, with Hideaway being the best of the bunch, but most of this is repetitive and without any development. Now that I have gotten this off of my chest, I'm feeling a bit charitable, but not much. I originally gave this a very weak 2 stars, but after thinking about it, I can only give this 1 star.

PS - This should remove the bile from the fans who want to stone Phil Collins for moving Genesis towards pop / rock. All three did it while Genesis as a whole did it better then any of them individually.

PPS - After editing this once and downgrading it to 1 star status, I decided to go back and listen to it for the first time in years. What did not change is Rutherford can't sing. What did change a little is my opinion of some of the songs. Besides Hideaway, Maxine, Couldn't get Arrested while not being great (or even close) brings some fresh air into the mix. By that I mean its not as layered as Genesis or most any prog album, but in this case its not unwelcome. I'm going back to my original 2 stars.