THE POWER AND THE GLORY

We come now to my favourite Gentle Giant album, The Power And The Glory. Here Gentle Giant tackles politics in an interesting way. The critical and subversive sentiments reflected in the lyrics appeal to me very much. The lyrics are as clever as the music.

The previous In A Glass House had been a major improvement over Octopus, which I think is a bit silly and quite overrated. In A Glass House, great though it is, has a couple of irritating moments. The Power And The Glory, on the other hand, is consistently good and only the somewhat repetitive So Sincere is not as good as the other tracks.

I especially like their newfound ability to be serious and reflective both in the lyrics and in the music. Aspirations is a perfect example of just the type of song earlier Gentle Giant albums so desperately needed. It is a great and even subtle ballad. Here Gentle Giant finally dropped their tendency to be complex all the time, which mostly left the listener bewildered and with no room to breathe. Songs like Aspirations and similar more mellow moments on this album makes the more loaded and complex passages sound all the more powerful. You don't have to be complex all the time to make good and interesting music! The Power And The Glory is therefore a more dynamic album, held together by a good concept. I think this shows a much more mature Gentle Giant and this is the peak of their career.

The music is melodic and varied and it often rocks quite hard. There are not really any specific track(s) that stands out above all the others (like the title track on In A Glass House, for example), rather the album is good as a whole and it flows better than any other Gentle Giant album.

The "hail to the power and the glory" theme introduced in Proclamations return again in Valedictory creating a unity of the whole album in a much more convincing way than the (somewhat annoying) sound of breaking glass did on In A Glass House. A great finale to a great album!