RAINDANCE

Been a while since I have reviewed a Gryphon album, let's change that. After their third release, Red Queen to Gryphon Three, the band has gone into a more progressive stance, more than they ever had in their career. At this time they had two fairly solid albums that played in their medieval wizardry, combining their folk influences with more electric styles of playing, creating a unique sound they bathed in. Here, in Raindance, we get some of the same-ish material that Red Queen to Gryphon Three brought to the table, but with something a little different this time.

The first time I heard this album I was very confused since it never really felt like Gryphon, heck more like a variety of other bands that weren't them. This could be due to them trying to evolve their more progressive rock sound they started with Midnight Mushrumps and evolved with Red Queen. However as shown with the first track of Down The Dog, it seems like sometimes evolving to where you cannot have much of your original sound retain some curfew is a way to make you fly too close to the sun. The thing about Gryphon that made them special was the medieval sound that they have retained since their beginning, and only expanded more through their career. Here though it is all but lost. We get keys similar in vein to Gentle Giant, fewer acoustic instruments, and a lot more percussion than usual. Not only does it not feel like Gryphon, it feels more like parodying off of progressive rock but not doing it effectively, unlike some of their other progressive folk contemporaries (cough cough Jethro Tull). While it is far from bad, it's far from Gryphon, and in its wake, I cannot feel right at home with it.

Despite this, they do have some folk aspects still retained, like in the title track of Raindance. This album's new age mix to their past sound does give me a glimpse of an idea that Gryphon might've had for this album. With Red Queen, it was a concept record based on a game of chess, with a lot of calculated yet seemingly random movements. For me this song could relate to maybe another concept that was scrapped away with, possibly the concept of rain as they transform their sound to something a bit more electronically wavey than more rock-ish. As for the song itself it took me a bit to fully appreciate it. I think it does lead to an interesting development in the band's sounds, and I'd say it is much more preferable for me in the context of Gryphon than anything else. It is a solid new-age track that feels weirdly at home with Gryphon's past sound. As it does sound very much at home with Gryphon, it feels like they are taking a bit too many notes from the lack of Mike Oldfield or Tangerine Dream. I'd say this entire album feels like they are peeking at the homework of all the other acts that were going around, almost as if they are copying. This leads me to feel as though they aren't trying as hard with this album, and that sucks a lot of the charm of Gryphon right out for me.

However, the most striking info for the claim in my point is a cover song of The Beatles' Mother Nature's Son. While I do not feel weird about the fact they are covering a song, it loses the album's charm in every sense of the word. While the last track made me question if they were even trying, this is definitive proof that they pretty much aren't. It's kinda sad in a way. It is like Icarus flying too close to the sun due to putting extreme faith in their wings. The thing that gets me is that none of the songs are bad, it's just they aren't original.

Things get more off-putting with "Le Cambrioleur Est Dans le Mouchoir" being almost a show tune that one of The Beatles would make. The thing too is that it pretty much doesn't fit with Gryphon's sound, creating the first true dud of the album. It is so short too that it makes it feel wasteful concerning the album as a whole. They wasted potential in what would be a mediocre album. This is even more so with the track afterward being Ormolu, however, with that track it does sound more like a classic Gryphon track so it may be the most original track on the album, but it is so short that it feels less like a track and just a snippet of what we could've gotten.

I think there should be some positives this album could bring, like for example with the Fontinental Version, a track that does feel like they aren't copying anyone really and instead trying to create their progressive rock track for once. We get a unique, almost Irish-sounding symphonic-styled prog here, making a unique flavor that I think only a band as definitely experimentative as Gryphon is. While it does almost feel like the band became less of what they once were, it isn't entirely bad and I think what it held in sound and scope does allow it to be a fresh and new track in a sea of mediocre melodies.

The last few shorter tracks of Wellbanger and Don't Say Go end with a Canterbury stylization, very much like Caravan. I have stated before that this made it almost extremely lackluster and unoriginal, so you can connect the dots with that. A shame.

However, we get a huge glimpse of what the album should've been with (Ein Klein) Heldenleben, the 16-minute epic that feels like what the evolution of Gryphon's sound should've been on this album. A mix of the more electricity of guitars and keys with the acoustic medieval stylizations that they were popular for. This feels like what Gryphon should sound like, minus the more rock-layering drums. Each small movement brings me to the same joys Red Queen led me on when I first reviewed it a while back. It ends pretty great too, not ending with a big guitar solo but more just strums of the acoustic guitar with light percussion. It is pretty great and their best epic since Midnight Mushrumps, heck it exceeds that song even further and beyond. It does make me ponder, like the man in the nude man on the album cover also listening to this album. It makes me ponder what this album could've been if they went in a more original direction than trying to copy their contemporaries. It is an epic that makes me question an alternate history where Gryphon led a different charge for this album that could've led them to further stardom rather than a fall from gracefulness.

It is very awkward how high Gryphon rose and how hard they fell within just two years. Red Queen was when they made their winning move, creating an album that, while imperfect, could've been the basis for a great progressive folk band that'd be considered a classic next to Jethro Tull or Harmonium. Instead, though, we get mere homework copying as Gryphon looks around the class, cheating on the test and only writing a fairly great write-up at the end of said test. No wonder 2 years after this release, and another album, they would disband, though they did come back in 2018 and made an album at the beginning of this decade so maybe after this day they learned their lesson. Hopefully, not certain, but hopefully.