THREE FRIENDS

Songs: 1 Prologue 7; 2 Schooldays 7,5; 3 Working All Day 6,5/7 4 Peel the Paint 8,5; 5 Mister Class and Quality 7+; 6 Three Friends 6,5 Review. It's a transition album, unfriendly, uneven, not completely successful. Gentle Giant try to renew themselves with a concept but the music is decidedly less inspired than the first two albums. Very strange the start, with two songs, long, without a marked rhythm (the battery does not beat on the snare), which give the sense of a stunted beginning, where the prologue follows another prologue. The first piece is less interesting than the second, and is based on a repeated guitar riff, which creates a grueling tension, which does not follow an adequate development. The second song is softer and more jazzy, as if suspended, with good instrumental parts but in the long run a little inconclusive. With the third song begins the rock part of the album, which provides as in the previous two long Lp solos in the central part, jam session style; in this piece the guitars and the voices remember Wreck, then in the instrumental part there are the wind instruments and then the organ (never so exasperated) to act as masters. But the song as a whole does not convince.

End of the first side.

The third long piece, Peel the Paint, is definitely a great piece, which knows how to combine a classical beginning with the violins to hard rock, with a great guitar solo and then drums (it is similar to the long tracks of the first two albums) ; remains one of the best pieces of all the production of the Gentle Giant, and the only true masterpiece of the album. It follows another rock song with a long central jam, but as already for the third of the album, it does not reach the levels of the rock pieces of the first two records. It ends with the short song that gives the title, which after a majestic beginning runs out in a long queue.

In conclusion, it is a transition album, discreet, very accurate but not very inspired, and in fact there are no notable musical passages (apart from Peel the Paint). Compared to Acquiring there are no medium-length pieces and the arrangements are less varied, less orchestral, less windy. Long pieces, only Peel The Paint is up to the masterpieces on both Gentle Giant and Acquiring. In fact there are two interlocutory songs, the first ones, which should be the novelty compared to the past but they are not remarkable; three rock tracks, one of which is noteworthy, and a tail song, negligible; the booty is modest. In addition you can see in the songs more repetitive moments in math rock style, ends in themselves. Vote 7+. Three stars.