INVISIBLE TOUCH

Few acts have the good fortune to release an album as popular and pervasive as "Invisible Touch". More than half of these songs ended up on regular radio/MTV rotation (noting, as I write this, that "Land of Confusion" might be the most visually unappealing video I've ever seen). This reached a saturation point for some, who found little distinction between Phil COLLINS' solo music and the work of GENESIS (as ballads like "Throwing It All Away" and "In Too Deep" would have felt at home under either moniker).

At this stage, the band was working from a set formula that included downbeat ballads wrapped in seductive melodies, longer instrumental works that suggested vaguely exotic dreamscapes, and songs with a social conscience. In fact, "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" is little more than a mix of "Mama" and "Man of Our Times". If the first side of music runs smoother than a Japanese train (i.e., like a Phil COLLINS record), Tony BANKS exerts his influence on the second side with the two-part "Domino" and the closing instrumental, "The Brazilian". As clever as BANKS can be, his growing interest in percussive and nonmusical sounds (heard on "Land of Confusion") contributes to what can be a dry and brittle-sounding record. With Phil often playing electronic percussion and Mike RUTHEFORD reduced to random bass lines and snippets of guitar, it's on Tony's shoulders to champion the softer side of GENESIS; a challenge he sometimes accepts ("In The Glow of the Night") and sometimes declines ("Invisible Touch").

GENESIS started on this path with "Abacab", and cultivated a new audience in the process, while alienating some old fans. Professionally, the trio was at the top of the mountain, their inevitable descent evidenced on "We Can't Dance" and completed with "Congo". The notion that "Invisible Touch" is product occasionally haunts me, but all records are product in some sense, and any one that makes millions of people happy must be a good thing.