Planet Earth?

Fourth time‘s a charm for Gabriel-era Genesis influenced The Watch (not counting the debut as The Night Watch), and on this one the melodies are a bit stronger, the chords a bit more instriguing, and the band a bit tighter than on their previous releases. For me personally, each cd is progressively a bit stronger than their last. A strong mood prevails throughout, that hits deepest in the quieter sections, and ‘Something Wrong‘ is my favorite on this or any Watch album, especially the instrumental conclusion. In fact instrumental passages are the only thing lacking here and the biggest distinction from early Genesis, which revelled in instrumental sections. What few passages there are without vocals are wonderful, and given that the album is only 45 minutes long, an instrumental closing song would be most welcome. Still, I cant complain as the music is highly complex and intriguing and compositionally quite well done, even brilliant at times. For the uniniated, there are parallels to Genesis, but The Watch has their own sound as well. Since Genesis has a lot of variety in their albums, several bands could have a strong influence and sound nothing like each other. As to The Watch, I would say ‘Get Em Out By Friday‘ is an example of the sound of Genesis that is followed, but the aforementioned ‘Something Wrong‘ is like a more complex ‘Entangled‘. Overall there is a lot to digest, and subtleties abound, making this what will surely be one of the most interesting and satisfying cds of 2010.