PLEASE DON'T TOUCH!

This album marked my introduction to Steve Hackett's solo career and although I later found quite a few much better albums in his discography, Please Don't Touch! is still one of the albums that I will always have a soft-spot for.

This album is a good follow-up to the brilliant debut album. Still anything that gets released right after Voyage Of The Acolyte is bound to be considered somewhat of a letdown in comparison. Please Don't Touch! has one major problem for me - it sounds too much like an 80's album, which is quite strange considering that it isn't one. While the album's title-track is as great as anything off Voyage Of The Acolyte, the same cannot be said about the rest of the album. This has a lot to do with the guest vocalists and their individual contributions that turn this into an uneven and ,as earlier mentioned, 80's-sounding recording.

Luckily Steve realized most of the errors that he made with this album and did everything to ensure that Spectral Mornings and Defector would end the decade on a high note. 1978 might not been Hackett's strongest year but at least he made those mistakes and later used them to perfect his sound and I respect him for taking those those steps.

***** star songs: Please Don't Touch (3:39)

**** star songs: Narnia (4:06) Carry On Up The Vicarage (3:11) Racing In A (5:07) Kim (2:14) How Can I? (4:40) Land Of A Thousand Autumns (1:57) The Voice Of Necam (3:11)

*** star songs: Hoping Love Will Last (4:09) Icarus Ascending (6:21)

Total Rating: 3,82