ACQUIRING THE TASTE

Gentle Giant's goal is revealed in this record: It is their goal to expand the frontiers of contemperary popular music at the risk of being very unpopular. Well, I quess they have achieved some popularity at Progarchives at least!

After a keyboardintro the first couplet starts with a acoustic guitar. The next couplet a flute and trompet are introduced. And than the catchy guitarriff with great time intervals is introduced followed by melancholic vocals; a xylophone solo followed by a guitarsolo. Than another couplet and it goes on and on. There happens so much it is difficult to notice everything. Pentacruel's Nativity is a great opening track indeed!

Edge of Twilight is a bit sinister and slow track. The are almost spoken out whispering. I like the drumsolo combined with a xylophonesolo in the middle.

In the next song "The House, The Street, The Room" each couple starts like as hard-rock song and then changes into pscyhedelic. After two couplets an avant-garde solo is to be heard whereafter a hardrock guitar solo with wah-wah pedals kicks ass. This may be one of the heaviest moments of Gentle Giant! Another couplet ends in some avant garde and the song is over.

Side one ends with the titletrack which is an instrumental one: a nice symphonic prog piece. For so far this record is worth five stars!

Wreck is a seaman folksong in a gentle giant sauce: it really works! The Moon is Down is another slow song. This works good for the variety and the balance of the record. Both songs offer great solo's. Black Cat the second slow song in a row has some good violin parts.

This albums ends with Plain Truth which is a bit heavier. While this is a good song I would have wanted an even better song for ending this record. Now I'm in a doubt for giving this work a four or five starrating and so I'll give it 4,5 stars.