INTERVIEW

3,5 stars, really. Interview was the first ever album by british great proggers Gentle Giant to show some cracks. It is still very good, some would say even excellent when compared to a lot fo things other prog acts were doing at the time, but for GG standards, this one was not as good as what the group was doing up to that point, specially the previous one, the brilliant Free Hand. I read in interviews (pun not inteneded) that the band was feeling the pressure of success: constant touring and little time to write, arrange and record. Maybe this is best shown by the record´s running time, a meager 36 minutes of music.

That´s not to say Interview does not have its moments. Most of the time they still show GG´s incredible musicanship and creativity, plus their unique flair for the nice melody even inside the most avant guard framework.. I Lost My Head is a good example of this. it´s a great track and a typical GG classic: powerful, convincing and original. It´s the CD´s highlight, no doubt. The main problem here is the fact that the band was less bolder, just recycling the formula used on the other albums. The biggest novelty is the second track, Give It Back, where they recorded a kind of prog-reggae, something I had never heard of. It is quite interesting, but that´s all. It´s defintily not one of their best songs.

There was also a change of focus: there is almost no flute, cello or violin and very few sax parts. The mellotron was also retired and replaced by synths. Nothing wrong with that. But once again it seems the band was trying to to change their sound to a more simpler approach. I guess it would be ok if their songwriting was not suffering from exaustion. And, unfortunatly, their next releases would do nothing to fix those problems. The band was caught in a situation where they started to lose their older fans and at the same time were not finding a new audience.

Still, Interview is fine work. It´s was unfairly treated by fans at the time. They were expecting GG to outdo themselves as they used to so many times in the past. But in the end I found nothing really wrong with the album per se. There is not a single track where you can point mistakes or weakness. Even when they repeated themselves, Gentle Giant did it very well. Maybe my rating is a bit harsh too, but I can put it in the same league as the others. It´s slightly inferior for GG standards, like it or not. But still a worth addition if you´re a fan of this great and groundbreaking outfit.