GET OUT OF MY FATHER'S CAR!

So after listening to and reviewing their masterpiece of an album ReInvention, I was excited to hear their next album. With such a strange name and cover art for the Gryphon band's more medieval and almost fantastical image, having an album cover depicting a pterodactyl with umbrellas for wings chasing after the band's heads while they fall in a colorful car is quite intriguing, to say the least. Clearly, with the instruments that are falling with the heads, I guess that it'd sound very similar to ReInvention with some tweaks to what the album could entail. What I got instead was some of the most varied and bizarre music that the band has created in their whole career.

The album starts with the title track of the album. This is probably the jazziest Gryphon song they have recorded with a lot more emphasis on horns and improvisational music that sparks memories of the more jazzy progressive rock of the 70s, almost as a sort of tribute to that style of music. I think in all due respects, this song is great and still keeps up with the more original and experimented-minded direction the group followed with ReInvention, but to me, it doesn't feel like Gryphon. It is not to do with Raindance or Treason where it sounded like other bands that weren't Gryphon, but here it doesn't give me those Gryphon vibes. That witty charm in their music has been lost in this song and even if this may be a new direction for the band to take, I think they need a bit more time before fully going into the more jazzy rock sounds that act like Gentle Giant or Peter Hammill refined in the 70s.

Though those remedies are taken away with A Bit Of Music By Me. We get back into those classic folk sounds that Gryphon has a knack for, and all that charm they had on me with their records instantly comes back. How it is all played so elegantly lets this song be a really good defining moment in this album. It has this more renaissance feel to it, almost as if the band is making music for a Da Vinci painting. It is as elegant as it is beautiful.

So we have the more jazzy side of Gryphon with the title track, and the folk side of Gryphon with A Bit Of Music By Me. How can the band combine these two attributes? Well Percy the Defective Perspective Detective may answer that. We get a fun little melody with this one, combining the more medieval folk with the jazzy 70s-styled progressive rock that was very popular in those golden years of progressive music. This one-two punch lets this quick song stand out very well in the sea of songs by Gryphon. It is unique, bouncy, and incredibly colorful.

This mix does switch around a bit with the folk and jazz, and sometimes separated starting with the song A Stranger Kiss. One of the more folk-attributed songs on this album, we get a more melancholic vibe within this song than most of the songs here on this album. With that, we get a sense of the much-needed break away from the more rocking-out tracks we have gotten, or the more witty and intellectually potent folk tunes. It is a good dividing line between those two attributes of sound that I wish Gryphon did more of.

Back to the pattern, we have Suite For '68. Man, what a lovely little tune, a lot of pretty uses of a more baroque style of progressive folk just make me very happy. It is unique in how each moment it changes around and becomes something similar, but completely new. That is how I like my suites, to be honest. Now I will say, I think it is too short to be considered a full suite of music. For me, the perfect amount of time a suit should be is 10 minutes and up. Five minutes is simply too short and I think this song should be able to benefit from a long length. It may become the best song off here if it was 10+ minutes, but sadly it isn't. Still a good song though.

The band does have some comedic routes in their music, and The Brief History of a Bassoon explores that in a funny little tune. It is sort of a tongue-in-cheek song about one of the prominent instruments of Gryphon's whole career, that being the bassoon. The joke here is that there is no bassoon present in this song. Believe me, I went through it over and over again, and still no bassoon. I even looked up videos of what a bassoon sounds like to double-check, and yet no bassoon. I find it kinda hilarious. It is like studying for a math test and instead of getting the equations, you get the answers and only the answers. Rather funny how things work out like that. A fun little tune that ties some knots in the album and experience Gryphon brings.

Krum Dancing also plays into the humor of Gryphon, retaining the folk instrumental factors, but also sort of making this song almost a dance track. I can almost certainly see people dancing to this in pubs of some kind. It is almost funny how when Gryphon does things right, they do them right, but when they try humor, they do it with class that doesn't devolve the music.

While in their last album they had a tiny psychedelic edge, Forth Sahara expands on that with a more space edge to the sound and higher use of keyboards than ever before. It certainly reminds me of the greats of Eloy and Nektar without fully becoming them and ripping them off in sound and focus. You can still tell they are still Gryphon by their sound and focus, but with new stuff added on to make them stand out a bit more from their previous efforts. Certainly a fine song.

In a flip of the coin to one of the first few songs of the album, Christina's Song takes some of the same notes A Stranger Kiss did but sadly doesn't do them as well. I do not get a sense of melancholy with this song, and while I do like the song it never strikes my fancy enough for me to fully LOVE it if that makes sense. It is a neat song, but sadly I cannot say it is really special.

One of the weirder and more proggy songs on this album, Normal Wisdom From the Swamp... (A Sonic Tonic), does something similar to Percy The Defective Perspective Detective where they combine the jazzy progressive rock with their folk sound, however this time elongated and done quite better if I may add. This may be the band's most experimental song yet, combining new techniques into their sound that allows them to stretch their legs more, and create something very special. It is a very fun and enjoyable song, and one that I think will be regarded as a modern-day classic with time and patience.

Ending the album off is Parting Shot, and?My god, what a song to end this whole Gryphon journey. I know the band is still going on, but man once I heard this song I knew this would be one of my favorites off here. It is so emotional, so beautiful, and so rewarding. Even after the mixed reception all of Gryphon's albums have brought, I can still see them as being enjoyable to some capacity, even with Treason. To me, Gryphon is a fun type of progressive folk. Hearing and reviewing them has been incredibly enjoyable, and while some of their songs aren't the best, if they may not strike lightning in the bottle all of the time, they still have a place in my heart with a lot of other bands. Their music is one of the best out there, and they need some more recognition. Parting Shot represents all of that, a beautiful song that closes the curtains for now.

A strange, but an incredibly enjoyable album. While it wasn't as profoundly magical as ReInvention, it is still a great album they released in this century. Hailing back to those fun times in the 70s and truly embracing their image in the scene was a great move they pulled with ReInvention, and they still keep it up with this album. It is an album that slowly but surely became one of my favorites from the group, and I do think it should be recognized as a great release from this group.