At this point, the fine line between Genesis and Phil Collins as a solo artist blurs so much that the penultimate album to feature him could easily in most cases be mistaken as one of his. Bringing much of his r&b and soul influences to many of the tracks, cutting shorter and more commercial songs, with only really Tony Banks trying to keep the longer, more epic tracks in a bid to retain something, anything of the Genesis motif, the thirteenth album was certainly unlucky for some, myself included. I don't hate it, but I see it as the natural progression from
Abacab and much of
Genesis, to where the band could hardly even be afforded the description progressive rock.
Of course, the continuing new direction increased their popularity, leading Brett Easton Ellis's psychopath killer in his cult novel
American Psycho to laud this album as their best (a lot he knew!) and giving the band their first ever number one hit single in the US of A, when the title track went to the top. The album itself was another number one in the UK, making it four in a row, while it hit the number three slot in the USA. At this point, certainly from a Stateside point of view, it was fair to say Genesis, the new Genesis, had arrived. But was the old Genesis dead, or were there still a few breaths left in its slowly-dying body as it began to give up the ghost but refused to die without a fight?
Invisible Touch (1986)
I don't know what an invisible touch is, but she has one, apparently. Or at least, she seems to. After a tour to promote their twelfth album, a third solo effort from Collins, the birth of Mike + The Mechanics to keep Mike Rutherford busy, and an album of soundtracks from Tony Banks imaginatively entitled
Soundtracks 
Genesis reconvened to record their next album. It was three years on from the release of the self-titled, and they were riding pretty high on the success of singles like “Mama” and “That's All”, pulling in new fans while probably ditching older ones. Their next album would capitalise on the success, both of the new Genesis and of Phil Collins's somewhat meteoric rise to solo fame, as his hits easily eclipsed those of his parent band - indeed, he was doing so well on his own that there were whispers that he would not return to the band and that Genesis had split. Perhaps sadly in retrospect, this would not turn out to be the case.
Rattling, tumbling drums power in the title track, with a jangly, poppy guitar from Rutherford and Genesis make no apologies for the new direction they were going in as they open the new album up. And why would they? It got them to number one; who cared about some old stuck-in-the-mud fans who had carried them through the seventies? That was the past, man, and this was the Genesis of the future. Musically, if not actually literally, a rebirth that would see the band move further and further into pop territory until eventually ... Well, more of that to come. Much of this album has been dogged by the accusation that it could really be a Phil Collins solo album, and it's hard to refute that, when you listen to many of the tracks, “Invisible Touch” being a prime example. Again, it's not the Genesis we know, even the Genesis of “That's All” or the terrible “Illegal Alien”. It's not even the gentle Genesis of “Follow You Follow Me” or even the somewhat more acerbic but still recognisable Genesis that pushed “Mama” into the charts. All of those were, to one degree or another, possible to tie down as being Genesis songs. But this could have been written and played by anyone from Go West to Duran Duran. There's just nothing in the song that reminds me of old Genesis, and even Banks's synths are snappy rather than sonorous, poppy rather than placid and jumping rather than rippling. The rot has set in.
Do I need to describe the song? You all know it, even those who hate Genesis will have heard it on the radio or TV. It was, after all, at number one so you could hardly avoid it. I feel it's devoid of any real emotion or connection to the band, and if I didn't know better would have thought it could have been written for them, but given Collins's embracing of the worlds of pop, soul and even jazz on his solo albums, it shouldn't really come as too big a surprise. But for me, it was not a pleasant one. Bah, there's not even a bridge! Oh, and let's utilise the most cliched of cliches in pop music, changing the key up one octave for the final chorus. Boo. The overuse of electronic drum machines is also unwelcome, and further evidence if any were needed of their changing musical style.
There is some hope though, as the second track is one of those (almost) old Genesis epics, even if it is basically a love song that runs for nearly nine minutes. It has a spooky intro thanks to Banks's keys and, it has to be admitted, the damn drum machine. Originally tentatively titled “Monkey/Zulu”, it eventually became “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” (think I preferred the working title!) and was, rather amazingly, released in a very truncated form as a single, getting to number three in the US and 18 here. I haven't heard the single version, but they chopped about fifty percent out of the song, so I assume the best parts were removed, including the instrumental midsection. There are echoes of both “Mama” and “Misunderstanding” here in the lyric, but it is the powerful instrumental midsection that really makes the song for me, leading us almost back down the path and over the garden wall (sorry) to a time when Genesis made superb, intricate, thoughtful music and the word “pop” was a bad one.
It can't be argued of course that the instrumental part is what extends the song to its somewhat overlong eight minutes fifty-two seconds, as it runs for more than three minutes, but I still can't really envision the shorter version being as good. Anyway, such thoughts are soon brushed aside as we have bigger problems. “Land of Confusion” carries us kicking and screaming through the Chamber of 32 Doors and back to the world of pop, where yet another hit single is waiting. With a very clever video made by those
Spitting Image people, it's a song that really suffered from being upstaged by its video. I mean, it's okay, but it's nothing terribly special. At least Rutherford gets to take control, banging out the riffs like there's no tomorrow, while the boys enjoy some close-harmony backing vocals. Again, I'm sure you know the song; it, or at least its video, was on constant rotation on the likes of MTV throughout 1986. Another big hit (14 in the UK and 4 in the US), I suppose it showed if nothing else that there would be no backdown from Genesis now. This album was cementing their place as a true pop band with
bona fide hits, and opening their music to a much wider audience, and they were never going back to Broadway.
In essence, a kind of political song whose message I feel was lost in the comic video, but it certainly did the business for them, as did the next one, the fourth single and one of the two ballads on the album (unless you count “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” as a ballad, which personally I don't). “In Too Deep” is, to be fair, a beautiful song but it smacks of Phil Collins solo material, and hovers close to songs like “One More Night”, “Take Me Home” and “Separate Lives”. The ticking drum machine is right out of “Thru These Walls” (note: see how Collins was already pandering to America by using the non-English spelling? Dickhead) and “In the Air Tonight”, although in fairness Banks plays some gorgeous piano and orchestral synth, and Collins's vocal is smooth, though at this point I had had enough of him, having been subjected to
No Jacket Required and its various singles for way too long. I really don't want to talk about “Anything She Does”. It's just awful, and sounds like it was thrown together in a few minutes, perhaps as a last-minute filler, but I don't think it was. It's loud, it's fast, it's sort of abrasive and it has a kind of latin feel to it, so it is different, but maybe the trouble is that it's too different. It's like something off a Ricky Martin album, not that I'd know what that sounds like. It's salsa, soul, rock and roll, just doesn't work for me, especially the frenetic chorus. Meh. Sounds like trumpets in there again, though it could be synthesised. Oh, and the main melody for the verses is ripped off from “Illegal alien”, just to cap it off.
That could have been it for me, but then we get “Domino”, one more big epic that actually nods much more to the Genesis of yesteryear than “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” did. With a nice slow jangly guitar and hooting synth it is split into two sections, the first, “In the Glow of the Light”, a slow, moody piece run mostly on dark synth with some powerful percussion and orchestral hits. The whole thing runs for almost eleven minutes, which is something of a joy for old Genesis fans like me, and it really is a standout on the album. There's a nod back to “Undertow” when Collins snarls
”Sheets of double glazing help to keep outside the night” and the first part is quite sombre and bitter, then in the second part, “The Last Domino”, it kicks into life with a galloping beat, somewhat a very distant cousin of the “Home By the Sea/ Second Home By the Sea” model, as well as nods to "Duke's Travels". Banks excels on the keys here, driving the song forward, in both parts, and effectively bridging the two as his morose, crying synth becomes a trumpeting, rocketing one, the whole tempo picking up as it reaches the fourth minute and launches into the second part.
With still ominous but faster synth Banks hammers along, grabbing elements from older songs as he goes, Rutherford painting the edges with superb guitar flourishes, Collins's voice getting more urgent and passionate. The desire for horror/outrage is encapsulated in the lines
”Well you never did see/ Such a terrible thing/ As you seen last night on the TV/ Maybe if we're lucky they'll show it again/ Such a terrible thing to see!” with the very antithesis of “Blood On the Rooftops” from
Wind and Wuthering. The beat gets stronger, the rhythm harder and it really starts to rock along in the seventh minute, as the band get into their stride. Why isn't the rest of the album like this?
But it isn't. There's another soppy love ballad to almost close out the album, and though “Throwing it All Away” is a decent song, it's kind of almost an amalgam of “In too deep” and “Taking it all too hard” from the previous album. Not surprisingly at this point, it too was a big hit stateside when released as a single. I wonder what they would have made of “Domino”?
Oh, I see it charted! Even though not released as a single. Interesting. And it's about the war that was raging in Lebanon at the time. Well, that just throws into sharper relief the (sorry) throwaway nature of this song, which is nothing more or less than a simple pop ballad. Weirdly, though written by Rutherford, where I think a guitar solo would have fit, they decide instead to sing the chorus in a round of “Woo-ooh-ooh-ohh”s. We end then on an instrumental, and while it's good it's a little tacked on, with a very industrial/electronic feel to it. “The Brazilian”? Really? Why? Then again, that's a question I could ask about this whole album.
TRACK LISTING
Invisible Touch
Tonight, Tonight, Tonight
Land of Confusion
In Too Deep
Anything She Does
Domino
(i) In the Glow of the Light
(ii) The Last Domino
Throwing it All Away
The Brazilian
At the time, I desperately tried to like this album, because who wants to admit his heroes have failed him, right? But after suffering through
Abacab and
Genesis I was not in any mood to be forgiving, and to retain me as a fan they would have to have pulled something major out of the hat. They didn't. With the exception of maybe two tracks, this is a pop album, no more and no less, and worse, a badly-disguised Phil Collins solo album. I had already bought
No Jacket Required - I didn't need an extension of that.
Luckily for me, Genesis made one final rally before they more or less called it a day, coming back with an album that, while it never quite returned them to the glory days of their progressive rock zenith, at least tried a lot harder than this wannabe-Collins effort. Invisible touch, eh? Touch this.
Rating: 6.4/10