IN A GLASS HOUSE

I listened to this yesterday and it just struck me how bad the lead vocalist is. No wonder they could not have as much charting success as they wanted! It's terrible for me to think that one of their albums made the top 50 on the US album charts!

A lot of prog bands have the prog box ticked, but honestly their music is hard to sit through. Often prog bands either don't write good melodies or absolutely not hooks, and way too many prog bands have terrible vocalists; mumblers and/or production that buries the vocals deep in the mix. Why is their singer always rushing, I could hardly understand any word.

I gave this album two because this band is 2/3 about the instrumental parts, and those are just fantastic. I was so enamoured with the second track, "An inmate's lullaby", which was almost exclusively made up of percussion instruments such as Xylophone and Marimba. The other songs all featured faultless musicianship and a wide array of styles, such as folk, medieval, jazz, fantasy, even their own styles. The production was very clear and crisp, the sound quite good. There was a nice variety of styles, from slower songs to faster songs. But as soon as the singer starts singing, it ruins the music.

I suppose it doesn't matter to Gentle Giant that their lead singer is Mister Mumbles, I mean their albums probably come with a big, nice lyrics sheet and before people even listen to the music they already know the words. I've seen people reading lyrics sheets on buses and trains on their way home.

If this band didn't get any success in their time they can shift the blame from themselves for not being able to write appealing hooks and instead come out and claim that the general record buying public lacks taste. Well they do... But they weren't as tasteless in seventies, or maybe they were, Gentle Giant albums were making the charts...