THE POWER AND THE GLORY

GENTLE GIANT fans are nothing if not an attentive lot, as this isn't the sort of music you can just allow to wash over you and come out cleaner for it. So I'm somewhat surprised that, though most acknowledge that the original closer "Valedictory" reprises the melody of the opener "Proclamation", I haven't found any references to the penultimate cut "The Face" also being eerily similar. Well, I guess the eerie part is a given with the Giant, but, hey, if I had stumbled on a hook like that I'd probably install it everywhere whether people were asking for it or not. And I'm guessing some Giant fans look down their noses at a hook.

"Proclamation" itself outshines most everything in the band's discography, exploiting the herky jerky rhythms for which the band is known to stunning effect and, in parts, rocking very hard but with a rare focus. Here and elsewhere, the clavinet and especially the electric piano of Kerry Minnear hold tcourt, and gently brush the gorgeous and surprisingly accessible ballad "Aspirations", This is followed by "Playing the Game", another standout with...gasp..another earworm?

There was a time I just would have thought this was a slightly less oily release but I'm ready to proclaim that, if only on the "Power and the Glory", I almost sort of "get" GENTLE GIANT., or at least I can use some type of cheap translate app to approximate that self satisfied feeling of intellectual superiority that comes with such potency. Sure, "So Sincere", "Cogs in Cogs" , and "No God's a Man" are annoyingly smarmy, but if they weren't, I don't think fans would go to bat for "Power and the Glory" like they do. And that's their job, not mine. Nifty.