I agree with you on pretty much all counts there, but when I bought that album - particularly as I was still seeing my shrink about the after-effects of Abacab! - I had hoped for and expected more. Yes, the "first side" is a good pop record, but I didn't buy a pop record, or at least I hadn't intended to. I wanted a Genesis album, an album that was, at least somewhat, prog rock. With a more or less steady decline from ATTW3 through Duke (though these are both excellent albums, don't get me wrong, and each holds its own prog credentials, but you could see where they were going) to Abacab they had slowly but surely begun to shed the prog influences. Songs were shorter, more commercial, more radio-friendly. Lyrical matter changed from fantasy and classical literature to love songs and the odd political one, comic songs and just have a good time songs. You could say their music became even more outside-of-Genesis-fandom friendly, or even more out-of-proghead-territory-friendly. I guess I heard "Mama" and thought now that sounds more like Genesis, but it really doesn't; it just sounds so much better than "Abacab", but that wouldn't be hard.
I guess it all started with "Follow You Follow Me" becoming a hit, and the band realising that after a career spanning, at that point, nearly twenty years, and not really having any other hits (other than "I Know What I Like") that they could have them, they could write them, and so they did. "Turn it On Again" was a huge hit from Duke, as was "Misunderstanding", and then we got the A-album. This self-titled (again, why?) helped them continue that trend of hits, culminating in, as already discussed, Invisible Touch, where there were four hits singles and only one track you could call prog-worthy. It might seem hyperbole, but it was for me kind of watching a loved one die.
No of course it wasn't: that is hyperbole, but it was like watching my own youth slip away maybe. These guys had been with me from the start: in my old original journal the first album I review is Seconds Out, and I note it was both the first time I heard Genesis and the first time I became aware of prog rock. I was 17 at the time, so now that I'm 58 that means they were with me all my life and part of my growing up, and it was hard to see them go, to see them change, and to see them really no longer be a band I was that bothered about.
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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018
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