PLEASE DON'T TOUCH!

Voyage of the Acolyte is a good album, It's a very good album. It is a consternation to me, though, how people can shower so much love on it, to the point of claiming that it is a lost Genesis masterpiece. First, that is insulting to Steve in that he created the work. Secondly, it is insulting to Steve because he surpassed his original solo album in both of the next two that he released.

Please Don't Touch is an extremely good album. The switch to shorter, more accessible songs doesn't detract from Steve's solid grounding in progressive music. In fact, Steve's solid grounding in prog may be the problem here. Like VOTA, this album suffers from compositions that sound like Steve doesn't know where to take them after he has wowed us with his skills. Specifically, Racing in A, Carry on up the Vicarage, The Voice of Necam, and Icarus Ascending fall in this category. Which doesn't mean that those are bad, by the way. Racing in A may be my favorite track off the album, despite it's lack of direction. Anyhow, Steve will solve this problem on his next (and easily best) solo album, Spectral Mornings.

So this one isn't quite a masterpiece. Sorry Steve. But I'll still give it four stars, and I'm happy to point out that this has Steve's best song that isn't an instrumental in Narnia.