THE MISSING PIECE

This album, much like most of Genesis's 80's output, is like a bad relationship. The kind of bad relationship where instead of breaking up with the other person, you continue to be with them, but only give half the effort. The band was essentially saying, "You know, despite that we've collectively decided to sell out now, we can probably still reach some of our prog fans if we try to be a little like our old selves!" with this album. Interview was a step down (into the four star range, rather than five), but so were The Power And The Glory and Acquiring The Taste (in my opinion) and they rebounded from both of those quite well. That certainly isn't the case here.

Like I mentioned in my simile above, the band was still trying for a little bit of progressive music on this. There are the occasional nice moments, such as on, "Memories Of The Old Days" which seems to be the favourite track for many on here. Unfortunately, occasional is all we get. The rest of the time, it's pop and/or pretty weak rock. Don't get me wrong, I like classic rock (not counting the prog bands) plenty, but this is not one of the good examples of it. This album would be bad no matter who made it.

I've yet to try their following two albums, but with this one is really scaring me away from wanting to go anywhere near them. One star, as I'm a big GG fan and I really don't think it's remotely close to two.