THREE FRIENDS

I have had a strange relationship with this album. When I first go into GG, this was the one album out of the highly rated ones, that I couldn't get into. As the years went by, Three Friends ended up being one of the GG albums I tend to listen to the most.

Even though most of their material takes time to fully digest, this one couldn't hold my interest at first for some reason. I remember thinking that it was quite a letdown after Acquiring The Taste. ATT is such a monster album that is loaded with ideas and must have used more tape that any album due to the multitude of instruments, voices etc.

Three Friends whittles away some of ornaments, studio tricks and some musical tangents from its predecessor and begins focusing on the bands biggest strength: playing as an ensemble. While still not as tight and complex as Octopus onwards (John Weathers hasn't joined yet), some of the dynamics displayed on ATT resurface here and it serves the storyline well. Newcomer drummer Malcolm Mortimore while competent, mainly serves as a time-keeper and rarely adds much of a stamp on this record. Here they take a stab at making themselves a concept album which as it turns out not a very cerebral one but more direct. Not a concept that is terribly emotional or awe-inspiring but a simple story about three boys who were best friends as classmates and end up in three different social classes as adults. The artist, the laborer and the white collar worker. The playing and the compositions are of high quality and each song does a fine job of evoking the feelings and describing the joys of childhood, (Schooldays), the tiresome lower middle class laborer (Working All Day), the frustrations of creating (Peel The Paint), and success and arrogance (Mister Class and Quality?). A unique and very detailed album and a great listen.