We Can't Dance (1991)

Artist: Genesis
Release Year: 1991

Rating: 4/10

Track Listing: 1) No Son of Mine; 2) Jesus He Knows Me; 3) Driving the Last Spike; 4) I Can't Dance; 5) Never a Time; 6) Dreaming While You Sleep; 7) Tell Me Why; 8) Living Forever; 9) Hold On My Heart; 10) Way of the World; 11) Since I Lost You; 12) Fading Lights.

Novelty does strange things - like compelling the music industry to squeeze every drop of disc space out of the shiny new CD format.  That's exactly what happened here, and the fact that it happened to a trio of long-running prog-turned-pop stars with a love of electronic elements, spelled near-disaster.  Apart from a few solid tracks, this album demonstrates just about everything Nirvana were rebelling against that same year: overproduction, blandness, and presumptuousness.  You know how there's that conspiracy theory about all the hip-hop record executives agreeing to favor consumerist lyrics over socially conscious ones by the early 90s?  I can't help but suspect there was a similar scheme to push sedatives like this onto suburban white people.

There are two epics on here.  First is "Driving the Last Spike": ostensibly a fan favorite, but a toss-up for me.  Okay, the guitar riffage near the climax is good, like the sunlight breaking through, and then the finale about "a new kind of order...they'll never see the likes of us...AGAIN!" is legitimately great.  But did they have to take five and a half sleepy minutes to get there?  Whatever.  You get more or less the same thing on "Fading Lights", which is marginally better, but trying to bring back the old prog magic after Invisible Touch was never going to work.  

Most of the rest are inoffensive, but in such a tepid way that I have a hard time remembering them at all.  Okay, I do remember "Hold On My Heart", of course, and I don't hate it like a lot of people seem to, even though it's just as trite as almost everything else on here.  Most of these songs overstay their welcome, and the production is disgustingly slick, with Phil's big booming drums often the only discernible instrument amid a swamp of synths and computer manipulation.  And speaking of which, I refuse to give them any points for the so-called "elephantus" sounds in "No Son of Mine".  Decent song (despite being melodramatic enough for a Lifetime TV movie), but Adrian Belew did that same effect over a decade prior.  Yawn!

For all that, there are two tracks that somewhat redeem this album.  The first is the fast, biting "Jesus He Knows Me", with its darkly humorous lyrics, catchy melody, and even great singing by Phil.  The other is the almost-title track "I Can't Dance", this time a deliberately off-balance, stompy song with a cool riff that sounds a lot tougher than the self-deprecating lyrics would suggest.  This was a hit that really deserved it (and I fondly remember the video on VH1, too!).  But after it's over, it's nothing but bland, sentimental schlock all the way to the end.  "We can't dance?"  More like "we can't entertain for more than ten consecutive minutes".