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I liked Bank's synths on Abacab which is half a good album in my view. At it's best, the cold feeling on most of the songs may not have been a major success, but in places it worked well and gave that era a more defining sound, although by invisible Touch it was turned out to be the hint of the over-slickness that over powered their sound ready for Beer Commercials and such. Phil's singing for a second album in a row was finding confidence in its own voice instead of trying to live up to Peter Gabriel on the A Trick of the Tail and Wind and Wuthering, both fine albums but sadly lacking after the classic Gabriel / Prog era, although you can say the far better Duke was the first place that it developed. After "Dodo/Lurker", Abacab really went south but there were some good songs resulting in an album that sounded like it was trying to find a sound for the 80's featuring the work of a great keyboardist who knew where to take the music plus having the Earth Wind and Fire horns on "No Reply At All" being a nice touch in a way that they added to Phil's "I Missed Again". S/T was a major refinement except for that damn "Illegal Alien" song which should have been thrown off right away (I still have memories of the video being played a hell of a lot on video shows then...it was not funny at all and was the nadir of their collective video work) although it gets points for "Mama" alone, with a couple of more thrown in for being a daring choice for a lead off single in a time that was defined by more mainstream stuff like "That's All" although you still have "Home by the Sea" to remind you about the band with more ambition than that.

I think that with the exception of "Land of Confusion", invisible Touch seriously marks down what was not likeable about 80's Genesis - the artistic debacle of the band in my view (I still need to hear Calling All Stations, though...). It sounded by the numbers, ready made for the MOR stations, although with the epic "Domino" which at least shows a bit of ambition with the ready-whip sound. The hits from that album are the ones that get played too much, but kept the bank accounts flowing. "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight"...oh no!!!

Thankfully, there was one last good single in "No Son of Mine" after that, but after Phil's Mid 80's defining third solo, and his first seriously soulless album that catered to the MOR, you can say that by '87, it was not really safe to admit to a music loving friend that you liked Genesis even with the classic Gabriel albums unless you have the albums to prove it with and an open mind to talk to in the US where they did not even crack the top half of the charts until "Follow You, Follow Me".

Still, let me try to add on something. I have a friend who was skeptical about my love of the Gabriel era when I suggested to him to try Selling England by the Pound, the best way to hear if the era fits (The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway might be too heavy of a journey for a first timer). Keep in mind that The US is where hardly anyone but serious music fans know how great the early albums are (OK, from Trespass on...although I have a small interest in the first album just for Peter's start as a writer) and Genesis is known through the housewife hits and where the common music listener only knows Peter's music through the So era. We were working at a place that had a radio station set to where the Invisible Touch stuff was playing a lot. It seriously worked!