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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