THE POWER AND THE GLORY

With the new template set with their previous album, GG is now really setting in their stride and reaching their cruising speed and this is translating into healthier sales. However, I find that two endearing early qualities are being progressively forgotten: the extensive use of acoustic instrument and the adventurous (albeit somewhat not always successful) tempo changes. So the more mechanical GG became, the more successful they became.

But their success may come from a small change of attitude of a part of the audiences. By 73, the general back-to-basics part of the counter-culture had really come down to the roots or traditional folk music and its pre-renaissance, medieval, Tudor and baroque eras of music and the meteoric rise of David Munrow was part of trigger of this musical current. Those factors were permitting out-of-this-world band like Gryphon, Amazing Blondel or even the Third Ear Band to rise to national attention (the phenomenon reaching continental Europe at the same time with Malicorne or Ougenweide), and also helping out GG whose medieval and pre-renaissance tastes were no secret.

Outside of those considerations for greater commercial success, one can not hide the fact that GG was down to business as usual (this is very relative because the extreme nature of their nature of their music CANNOT be casual and indulgent), and its formula now well established do point towards some kind of a well-oiled mechanical construction where creativity or inventivity play a lesser role. There are still some outstanding tracks on this conceptual album (about , you guessed it the vicissitudes of Power and this was coming during the un-related Watergate affair) such as Proclamation and the lovely Aspirations (maybe the most gorgeous slow track GG ever wrote). Other highlights are Playing The Game and the intriguing titled No God's A Man, the rest being just run-of-the-mill standard GG tracks, although Cogs and sSo Sincere are cowd favorites!

While I consider this album still a classic, I rate every album coming before it and Interview, much better, but Free Hand is actually very similar to this one and gets the same rating.

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