GENTLE GIANT
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Albums reviewed:
1970 – Gentle Giant (9+)
1971 - Acquiring the Taste (9)
1972 - Three Friends (7+)
1972 - Octopus (9)
1973 - In a Glass House (9-)
1974 - The Power and the Glory (6+)
1975 - Free Hand (8+)

Gentle Giant's debut, far from being the tame reproduction of King Crimson it's hailed to be (or accused of being), has its own little atmosphere and is very distinct from the rest of the GG catalogue. The two first Gentle Giant albums are the most distinct ones in my opinion. A lot of the sounds and instrumentation used here sound unlike what they turned to after. It IS certainly more traditional in its use of electric guitar and various keyboards... Anyway, if you are not familiar with Gentle Giant, you might as well start with this debut album, since it is more accessible. If you have heard of them before, you will expect something cold and crazily "amusical", which it sort of becomes later on, to some extent, but here... not quite.

Just listen to the soft Funny Ways, a beautiful medieval ballad based on string instruments and electrified in the middle by a ripping guitar solo. The melodies on this self-titled album are much easier to find than on most of their releases up to their average pop era of the late 70s. Isn't It Quiet And Cold? explores the same medieval feel, although in a somewhat less interesting way; still, the melody is there for all to grab. Even the most erratic number, the rocking opener Giant, although it has the signature "controlled chaos" of the band, slips in unabashed clear melodies at times. My favourite remains the Nothing At All / Why Not? sequence. It strands away from the more jazzy approach that many of their faster number have (like the weird synthy Alucard (Dracula reversed)), and explores pure blues rock. It is strong enough in pure rock terms but has the right quirk to make it Gentle Giant. Its structure reminds me of Stairway To Heaven, somehow, but hey, I sure haven't heard the Gentle Giant music as often as Led Zep's... Starts out with beautiful acoustic guitar that turns into medieval strumming, and the singing is pure gorgeousness. Slowly, the drum and bass's presences start to be felt stronger, "she sees love in his face, as she tells him to go, and so... here's a girl who had everything... finds she's nothing at all..." (the superb sung melody! wheeee!). And the song explodes in a blues electric guitar riffing that is something we wished Gentle Giant did more often. And listen to this wind-synth sound! Ah. One of the band's masterpieces. The singing turns evil... And the thing comes full circle. Why Not? is the final Celtic rock jam that brings the album to an atypical end, and you can pretty much ignore the Queen joke at the end.

The strength of this debut is its plain progressiveness and the uniqueness of its melody content when put next to other Gentle Giant albums. Fully enjoyable, and just erratic enough not to give a false representation of what the band is about. And it does put me in a pre-Arthurian legend...

Simon Lac, February 6th 2006

 

Already, the band turns towards a more mighty frigged out route. They acknowledge it themselves in a very pretentious liner note stating "we have abandoned all preconceived thoughts on blatant commercialism"... Right. Well they're STILL not there yet if you ask me; 'Acquiring the Taste' still contains more "typical" heavy rock riffing than their later releases, and I am definitely NOT saying that this is a problem. The odd jazz experimentations appear here and there though, and it's a unique brand of jazz.

The opener, inspired by Rabelais' character, retains simplicity and contains sudden heavy guitar appearances. It's the more subtle of the guitar oriented tracks, having more "breezy" moments than later rockers like The House, the Street, the Room. The latter inspires paranoia and claustrophobia as it shifts between gentle guitar sounds and the strong psychedelic riffing of the end; rocking amelody! Plain Truth is the other rocker, but it's rather "normal"... Enjoyable and rocks a lot! Of course, the simple melodies of their debut are already pretty much gone. Find the beauty in Edge of Twilight and we can discuss. The fun in such a track is in the odd percussion and xylophone jam, because its woodwind medieval balladry on an unpleasantly (and overthought) written vocal melody is only average. I always associated Edge with The Moon Is Down (because Edge starts with the lyrics "the moon is dooooown"; nice...). But it also has a similar slow odd percussion mood. I prefer The Moon Is Down though, because its melody (that again...) is easier to find, and it has a nice jazzy interlude with sax. Maybe I often forget to emphasize that GG are "sort of" about a medieval perspective on jazz... I guess... More jazz in Black Cat, a fun song in that it FEELS like a cat. The track "meows" and is all slender... For me, Wreck is among the best songs on this album, and oddly, it is often despised. It's a baroque pirate rock song that you can almost sing to; is THAT the problem? It's gorgeous! A gorgeous pirate song, you have to hear that "Hey hey yeah hold on!". And it's not really "simple" either, which means that it still qualifies as "weird Gentle Giant music", but it's FUN to listen to, and I think that's what they should aim at.

'Acquiring the Taste' occasionally becomes my favourite Gentle Giant album, although I have a hard time specifying... This band is very constant. I think that this album is melodically rather weak, but again, I'll give it a lot of points in that it has a very special ambience. It has an "old wooden house" texture, chamber-jazz-prog-rock of old... I don't know how to put it exactly. You'll just have to see for yourself. The only skippable tracks represent about 5 minutes of the total, the rest is classy.

Simon Lac, February 8th 2006

 

This is the North American album art, which was the same as for the first album... The European album art is pretty nice, showing three friends' silhouettes around a kind of campfire... Anyway. THIS, for me, is where Gentle Giant really settles in their more recognizable sound. This stands through even though a lot of the medieval touch isn't as strong here (and comes back on the next album). Something in the beat changes, the instrumentation, the sonority, is just closer to the typical Gentle Giant album. When I think of it, maybe that's one of the small problems with 'Three Friends'; it's the "typical" Gentle Giant album. Usually, being representative is a quality, here though, I don't think so... Still, it's a fine album.

The finest example of that problem is Prologue; a very typical "extremely active" Gentle Giant song, that ends up just being that... Very active, but not very memorable. Switches here and there, drums beating fast enough, lots of instruments. Wheee... And we're set for the concept. Ah yes, the concept. Three friends are in school, and they go on different life paths, and lo and behold, they all have their personalities and we find out none of them ends up pretty happy. Maybe that's why Schooldays is among the best tracks; they're happy! It's soft in tone "wait for me...", it's slow, but the crazy bass beats and lines they insert in such a slow song are pretty amazing! It's a very well done and thought song. It's jazzy, and that's clearly heard in the "metallophone" (metal xylophone?) solo. Working All Day is dedicated to the mindless "hand worker". It's just a rather typical heavy song depicting the disillusion of life ("dad says we were equal but we're really not, I suck, I buy stuff" (not the real lyrics, but close enough I guess...)). Well "typical" in the Gentle Giant sense. It has the bluesy rock riffing with the odd quirkiness that makes it a bit harder to follow. Peel the Paint, however, is about the failed artist. And boy is that one a huge song in the GG catalogue! Definite highlight! Starts off rather awkwardly, the guy is just trying to be an artist, until it turns into EVIL ROCK! "Peel the paint! Look underneath! You'll see the same old savage beast!!!" is sung with the evil desperate voice of an angry unproductive artist. This guy just isn't very mentally healthy. Nice guitar solo. Well, it just rocks, not very Gentle Giant-y, but certainly something they do very well. The last friend is the "busy business man"; Mister Class And Quality. I don't know why I associate it so much with Working All Day, it doesn't sound the same at all. But I guess in the end the life of the business man and the hand worker isn't that different. Mister Class And Quality seems to have a faster paced life punctuated by more keyboards and his brain seems to be cluttered with sudden thoughts coming from all side. A fine piece, simply not that rousing except in a couple of places, where it surpasses the Working All Day song (nice jam). The conclusion is beautiful though; Three Friends (maybe wrongly tracked on my CD!) explodes in a sort of cathedralic choir with beautiful heavenly keyboards at the back. And listen to that closing riff, one of the most beautiful strictly melodic GG moment; the angry bass line is "dramatic" but the descending and rising keyboard chords sound hopeful... aaah. Very good close. So good that I have a hard time not giving this album a bit more points... Nah.

Yep, you can wait to get this album, even though it's representative of GG, it's sadly not that exciting. The working hero concept puts a rather "constant" flavour on the album, and it's a bit annoying frankly. In fact, it's when the sound seems to escape from that general atmosphere (Peel the Paint, Three Friends) that the best comes.

Simon Lac, February 8th 2006

 

The classic. Many people say "start with 'Octopus'"! Well I'm not sure, I started with it and it was really hard to get into. Why would this be representative of Gentle Giant anyway? It's certainly their most convoluted album (well, almost...). So what's the point? It'll give the false impression, that still lingers, that the band is all about being a bunch of instrument wankers. They're not, and you need to hear other albums to realise that 'Octopus' ISN'T about that either.

Up to now, their slickest album. The first two songs certainly highlight that. You will be able to follow them, even though, yes, they are quirky in their arrangements. Wow, that's almost POP! Oh yeah, and Rabelais makes his apparition again. Not that I care. I mean, it's Gentle Giant, I barely listen to what they say except on certain key tracks. And in case you thought medievalery was gone, nope! Raconteur Troubadour has the violin melodies and percussions to put you back there. The beat is jerky, so is the sung part, but the violins and percussions ARE medieval. And I always sort of liked A Cry For Everyone more than most people. I guess I'm a sucker for Gentle Giant's simpler rock statements. One of their most plain rock songs bringing back sounds of Plain Truth from their sophomore release. I hated Knots at first, but now I hear how brilliant it is. They did other similar stuff later, maybe even better stuff! It's basically 26,164 different voice melodies all sung together making a song (and they have different lyrics too). I can't believe they'd do that live. It seems SO fun to be able to sing such an entangled piece of vocal mish-mash! Wonderfully written "he tries to *make heeeer* make her afraid! *by not being* not being afraid!". Weird. From there the album starts to slow down in greatness though. The Boys In the Band is a very good fast-paced twisted instrumental that I can't describe much more. The album contains simpler piano and guitar interplay than I remembered... Piano, sax, guitar. Nice. Except for the pretty and *honest* love piano-balladry of Think Of Me With Kindness, the rest is rather similar in style, not putting on anything new. Dog's Life is a tribute to the roadies (ah that's very nice to them, dawgs), it's half funny and certainly reminds me of Black Cat, except for dogs. River slightly annoys me though. It's the longest track and is just an awkward re-ash of everything on the record. The chorus isn't even catchy, the keyboard is unimaginative and the guitar lines not very memorable. A rather flat end to an otherwise great album (except the guitar solo at the end, which saves the day).

Well, those guys are pretty constant in quality... The atmosphere of 'Octopus' isn't as clearly defined as the very good 'Acquiring the Taste', an album I like about equally, but the quality of the arrangements and playing is far superior here. Production is great too, crisp and separated. I'd start with another album (the debut!), but in the long term, I don't think you're risking much by trying this one out. Oh yeah, the European album art is much nicer.

Simon Lac, February 8th 2006

 

This album was hard to find in North America until recently. When it was first released in 1973 it was only available here as an expensive and complicated to get import. The record company must have had doubts about the band's capacity to sell (oh really?!) and the fact that the album came with a complex and expensive artwork certainly didn't help (there's a plastic window in the middle, anyway...). Some fans say this is the best Gentle Giant album. One thing for sure, it is probably the most representative of their sound, and at this, it succeeds better than 'Three Friends', because it's more interesting and rocking. The concept is about the different prisons of life, different types of captivity (running away, being insane, jailed, stuck in a relationship, everything is fragile (a glass house)). The album starts as if it's going to have the same "just more Gentle Giant" problem of 'Three Friends' but picks up by the middle with real energy in Way Of Life. While the track can feel slightly awkward (isn't that a rule for most of Gentle Giant's songs anyway?), it does have something going for itself. At least, it doesn't feature anything plain ugly like the way they destroy that chorus in The Runaway, a mighty good song ruined by screwing the melody of the chorus with just one OFF note that pisses me off. Way Of Life might be simple prog rock, but it couldn't be anyone except Gentle Giant. Hey, that was 1973, the year prog rock was totally defined and bands knew precisely what they belonged to when they wrote their music. One of the great things about this album is that the medieval feel is still there, but it's very subtle and hidden. I thought they had abandoned it at first, but no, listen to those rhythms of Experience for instance, and the flutes backing choir singing. In that sense, the album is unique in that it's very "prog-rock" with soft textures of medievalry. It's the blues feel that is hard to find, although that had already started with 'Octopus'. The track most reminiscent of the previous album is probably the title track, a very good pure Gentle Giant fun that shares with Experience, except for the fact that it rocks harder (should I scrap that "no blues" comment? naaah...). In any case, I say that missing on 'In a Glass House' is missing on a step of development in Gentle Giant's history, since it is certainly not like its predecessor or successor. I find the album hard to rate because the beginning just doesn't excite me all that much, but as I said, starting at Way Of Life, the album grabs you and won't let go. And where a soft song like An Inmates Lullaby is half ugly (still okay), the error is corrected and made up for by the beautiful calm melody of the short A Reunion. Maybe, I say maaaaybe, they could have been a bit more diverse... But the band is still going very strong, too bad they're about to go overboard with 'The Power and the Glory'.

The bonus track on this 2005 remaster is actually not only Experience live, it's a The Runaway/Experience live medley, and a rather interesting one.

Simon Lac, February 25th 2006

 

Power corrupts! The king is proclaimed king, he has good intentions, but they are twisted by the power at hand. That's what Gentle Giant is trying to tell you on their 1974 release. Well, that's all nice, except it's horribly complicated and the melodies are murdered one after the other. A series of melody murders. Yep. 'The Power and the Glory' is where, in my opinion, the band goes overboard for the first time. It's as if the slight integrity that was left in their complexity exercises of before was suddenly gone. If you want to accuse the band of being complicated for the sake of it, start here (or maybe 'In'terview'...). It's not obvious right away though. Proclamation is actually good enough, and it has interesting bass/drum interplay, but the chorus' point IS to sound totally dissonant (and one day out of two, it's sort of interesting). Crap like So Sincere hurts though. It is the album's Knots, that is, the track where they make odd voice harmonies for many minutes. At least Knots was beautiful, So Sincere is backed by a string section and bass melody that doesn't make sense, and you just want the end to save your soul. If it wasn't for that track, I could pretend that the first half of the album is pretty good, but sadly this one kills even that part of the album. Oddly, with a king on the album's art, and themes of royalty, power and monarchy, you'd expect this album to have the strongest medieval touch in Gentle Giant's discography. Well not so, except on the beautiful Aspirations where the singing might remind you of that, you are at lost in the folk department. At least, you have Proclamation and Playing the Game to rock you world. The latter has a funky bass march AND it makes you want to tap your foot, that's saying a lot for a Gentle Giant song. I also have to mention Cogs In Cogs, which is what the whole album was aiming at I think. What I mean is that it's probably the most complex song on the album, really giving off this odd "cogs clunking in other clogs in a weird machine" feel, but it sounds as if they were trying something, not just raping the dead body of Complexity Man (ugh, sorry). Yes, it sort of rocks, but it's close to the border of annoyance on some days... Oddly, whenever I hear Cogs In Cogs, I think of the "Metal Man" level in Mega Man 2 for the old Nintendo. After this one ends though, crap abounds, killing the rating of 'The Power and the Glory' with death (yes, killing with death). I've listened to the album many times and, while I vaguely remember the boring chorus of No God's a Man and the fact that Valedictory is a pointless reprise of Proclamation, the rest is a black cloud of nothingness in my brain. One of the weakest 10-15 minutes on any Gentle Giant albums. The final verdict is that, while some of the experimentation and rock on 'The Power and the Glory' makes for fine Gentle Giant material, there is too much wanking and forgetability going on especially in the awful So Sincere and the useless last three tracks to make this a very good album. I think the fact that fans rate this one as one of the best albums by the band says a lot about the crowd who loves this GG.

Simon Lac, February 26th 2006

 

Very refreshing. Gentle Giant turns away from overkill complexity and makes an album filled with hooks and subtle artsy aspirations. 'Free Hand' is probably the last breath of pure brilliance by the band. I really do not have any serious complaint about the album, it's catchy and thrilling in its pop approach on the prog of old. Just the Same starts off with a jerky fast paced pop tune bridged by a spacey and gorgeous guitar solo. The title track could be described in a similar way although it's definitely different, having more heavy electric guitar fun and interplay (boy do we miss that instrument on many GG records). Keep in mind that I use the word "pop" quite loosely, I mean, this IS Gentle Giant. But at least mostly anyone could follow what's going on on 'Free Hand' and enjoy a good part of it; still, they'd probably be saying "boy that's weird though!". They won't do an album without a Knots voice harmony build up though. And HOLY CRAP; On Reflection is almost... Well it might as well BE better than Knots! There are like 4 people singing at the same time, replacing instruments with their beautiful windy voices and melting together perfectly for a catchy chorus. The middle part is one of the last medieval puffs of air Gentle Giant offers you, softly sung, It's gorgeous, one of the band's best cuts. There's another puff of folk stuff on the plain medieval keyboard play of Talybont, a nice simple piece that does good in changing the sense of the "pop-prog-rock" approach found everywhere else. Of course, by the third track à la Just the Same (that is, Time to Kill), even if it's great, chugs along and sounds awesome, you start to have the feeling that the album could have more diversity. And not everything is as memorable as it could have been. The last song is the fifth thing in the same vein... And His Last Voyage, while quite beautiful in itself, is still another On Reflection adding a cool guitar solo, not as interesting, still charming. So, 'Free Hand' is a great place to start with Gentle Giant if you know that you don't like overly dissonant stuff (that or the debut). You'll most likely enjoy this, and if the small dissonance on 'Free Hand' annoys you, you know that you shouldn't dig deeper! Yes, 'Free Hand' is great when you get this weird feeling that YOU WANT to listen to Gentle Giant, but you don't feel like having your patience abused by random chords and untuneful messes. It's very close to 'In a Glass House' in terms of quality, for sure. I'd sure rate them equal on some other days...

So they turned away from complex wanking? No, not quite, there's a last wave of that coming before they finally let go...

Simon Lac, February 26th 2006