THREE FRIENDS

I've been listening to this record at least 3 or 4 times per month since 2009 and I never get tired of it. The first and only conceptual album by GENTLE GIANT narrates the lives of three childhood friends that become three very different people when they grow up. In this record, the medieval influenced music that was the main distinction in their first two albums and that would be part of some of their future records disappeared (or at least decreased a lot) but that didn't take off any of the greatness of the band, it's just that the uniqueness they had evolved and help them to create a very different kind of record. Also, this album was the last one to feature Malcolm MORTIMORE on drums before he was replaced by John WEATHERS and this was his way of making himself an unforgettable member of the band, I'm not trying to minimize the skills of any of the other members of the band, that would be ridiculous, but all the drum lines in this album are absolutely exquisite.

I will make a weird comparison with PINK FLOYD: I'd say that "The Piper at the gates of dawn" and "A saucerful of secrets" were the PINK FLOYD albums in which they were trying to define a characteristic sound (which I think GENTLE GIANT did in its first record), "Atom heart mother" was the album in which PINK FLOYD took its music to a new level of experimentation but with a much more clear and defined style that only needed a punch to get into what the band would do in the best times of its career (similar of what GENTLE GIANT did in "Acquiring the taste") and finally we got "Meddle" in which we could totally understand what those guys were about (and that was the role of "Three friends" in the discography of GENTLE GIANT).

Every song of this record is absolutely amazing, beyond the thematic of the conceptual album, the instrumentation is (once again) excellent and there is no doubt of the talent of these six guys. The album is most of the time full of rock passages with instruments that still were kind of unorthodox in rock music. Even in Progressive Rock, bands with this quality of multi-instrument musicians are hard to find, and the guys of GENTLE GIANT always demonstrated that their habilities were superior to most of their contemporary bands.

SONG RATING: Prologue, 5 Schooldays, 5 Working all day, 5 Peel the paint, 5 Mister class and quality, 5 Three friends, 4

AVERAGE: 4.83

PERCENTAGE: 96.67

ALBUM RATING: 5 stars

I ranked this album #37 on my TOP 100 favorite Progressive Rock albums of all time.

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