FREE HAND

Free Hand is another fan favorite, but while I have generally been enjoying my ride through the GG discography, this album is an absolute turn-off; it's cold, mechanical, contrived and snobby. I guess my main gripe is that I can't find anything spontaneous or emotive about this album.

GG are a talented bunch, but if their skills are not backed up by memorable songs, their music easily turns into the kind of mathematical constructed precision that I appreciate in a BMW limousine but that is very far removed from what I want to spend my time listening to.

This album sounds dead to me, it leaves no room for interpretation, it's over-rationalized and far-fetched. The only track that I can get into is His Last Voyage, one of those eerie GG songs that clearly show where Toby Driver got his ideas from. I also can't see the point of the continuing medieval madrigal type of singing. After 7 albums it's become really tiresome, a gimmick rather then anything else.

I always appreciated many songs on the preceding GG albums, and Acquiring the Taste even established itself as a favorite car-album past summer, but when it comes to their latter-day albums I'm obviously missing something, that incomprehensible something that makes these albums so appreciated with fans. Hardly 2 stars for me.