THE MISSING PIECE

This is somewhere between 1 and 2 stars, but I'm going to give it 2. On one hand, I find this album to be very poor, especially by Gentle Giant standards. However, I think many fans of the band would find some slight enjoyment in this album. This might be good for pop album, but pop is too uninteresting for me, even if it is by a prog band I love. I do enjoy most "prog-pop" stuff by IZZ, Kevin Gilbert, Man on Fire, etc. but this isn't progressive by any means of the definition.

I'm not going to really describe the music in full detail. Many songs are very similar, describing them all would get too boring. The first half is very commercial, but I do "Two Weeks in Spain" more than the other 3 songs. The second half is actually quite decent, but still poor compared to Gentle Giant's previous albums. It's still poppy, but more similar to the classic Gentle Giant that we all know and love. "Memories of Old Days" and "Mountain Time" are both two great songs.

So overall, I really wouldn't recommend this for anybody. If you're a real big fan of Gentle Giant, it wouldn't hurt to give this a try I suppose... some people here really do enjoy it.