STILL

This is really no further along the curve than "Bankstatement". As for the positive praise that well-meaning souls have laid at the foot of "Still", they've simply set the bar too low. True, it's a professional affair, engaging the services of FISH, Nik Kershaw, Andy Taylor and a returning Jayney Klimek on vocals, but I don't hear where this edges out something like Phil Manzanera's Southern Cross on the road to respectability.

If you're looking for BANKS to write pop songs with a certain amount of emotional soul wringing akin to the late '80s, then here you go. Not that the GENESIS keyboardist doesn't have the right to solicit the same audience as Mike + The Mechanics, but he can do so much more. The second half of "Another Murder of a Day" or even the classy ballad "Still It Takes Me By Surprise" are the sort of payoffs I expected, not FISH lamely stating "You're just a devil with a pretty angel face" (from "Angel Face"). The vocalists are all good (even BANKS acquits himself on "Hero For An Hour"), but like Steve HACKETT's "Please Don't Touch" the rotating cast breeds an air of arbitrariness. There are no instrumentals, which is sort of a shame, and no new ground is broken.

The inclusion of FISH will no doubt intrigue many, but honestly they only click at the end of "Another Murder of a Day" (easily the album's highlight). The rest of the material is merely competent pop music with hints of GENESIS' grandiloquence (a scent of "The Cinema Show" wafts through "Still It Takes Me By Surprise") and nods to BANKS' earlier work ("Hero For An Hour" does recall "And The Wheels Keep Turning"). Maybe I'm foolish to expect Tony BANKS to return to prog's green pastures, since his solo work has never leaned to the left side of GENESIS. If I view "Still" as a further straying into commercial blandness, blame it on my intractable allegiance to earlier ideals that were left by the wayside with the '80s.