The period at the end of an astonishing sentence

Listening to Calling All Stations.


It's a pleasant enough album, but I should be astonished if anyone considers this album essential Genesis. (Okay, that was a strawman, I see that.) Kind of feels like Tony Banks, riffing, because he doesn't know quite what else he should do. Of the eleven tracks, fully four run longer than seven minutes. Longer than seven and a half minutes, even. In the Genesis reunion videos, Banks is occasionally self-effacing about his tendency towards (shall we say) breadth. In the communal environment of Genesis, there was a refining process of which Banks seems to have been pretty consistently in need.

So . . . probably I should think more charitably of the album if I disregard it as a Genesis album, and think of it in light of a Tony Banks solo project. And in that bucket, the album is a significant advance on A Curious Feeling.

Still, the 67-minute CD has a curiously padded feeling, and I fear that this is a negative which came downstream from We Can't Dance. Which album may benefit in my ears from having listened to most of Calling All Stations first.

Back when there was still a Borders, I remember seeing this CD in the rack. From a distance. Even the cover art seemed not to beckon me.