Invisible Touch (1986)
1.Invisible Touch
2.Tonight, Tonight, Tonight
3.Land of Confusion
4.In Too Deep
5.Anything She Does
6.Domino
a.In The Glow of the Night
b.The Last Domino
7.Throwing it all Away
8.The Brazillian
 
It could easily be argued that 1986 was
the year of Genesis. Since the last studio release three years ago,
Phil Collins had become a bonifide superstar and still had many
solo hits on the charts at the time of this release. Michael
Rutherford, forming his group Mike and the Mechanics, also saw a lot of
chart action for that band's first release. Alumni Peter Gabriel also
found commercial success and topped the charts as well, most likely
driven by the MTV hit video "Sledgehammer". Oh yeah.. and Steve
Hackett's group GTR also did very well for a brief time. It can also be argued that
during this year, many people became, well, tired of the band as
well with all members, past and present, dominating the airwaves.
Because of this, many look upon this period with skeptism because of
overkill.
This is a very good album. Whereas the last release gave us a top ten
single finally, this one gave us the first (and to date only) number
one single (the title track). It should be pointed out that the
overall package is slightly less commercial than the last, we tend to
forget since five of the eight songs did in fact make the top
ten. The album did feature a long awaited instrumental The
Brazillian that features great percussion interplay between Banks
and Collins. Another piece Domino is a great ten plus minute
epic that this band seems to pull off better than probably anybody. The
best song here, Tonight, Tonight, Tonight is another lengthy
piece that was fortunately trimmed to a pleasing radio edit for more to
enjoy (a sad note is we tend to recall the Michelob Beer commercial when
it plays now, alas).
Like many popular albums throughout music, the quality diminishes during
excess repition, and while many songs such as In Too Deep and
Throwing it All Away are nicely done, we simply got sick of hearing
them after the first two hundred listnes. It should also be noted that
six of the eight songs were also made into music videos, and MTV
made sure we didn't forget how the tunes go. It's also a little
dissappointing that their live shows from here on out would seem to
consist of a huge chunk of this record, leaving many fans yearning for
their old seventies records. The price of success....
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