The album starts off with a spacey synthesiser melody rolling into the quaint trademark Gentle Giant vocals giving a quiet air of expectation about the album. Suddenly you’re introduced to a very eclectic mix of instruments and melodies all fighting for prominence over the vocals. You’re also treated to a few lovely guitar solos cutting through the rather aggressive melodies and keyboard riffs. The song ends in a wave of tinnitus and suddenly everything has calmed down.
Edge of Twilight has some lovely relaxing vocals, and it continues the trend of quirky little out of place melodies. But it also has a very bombastic drum solo dividing the song into two parts. The whole thing plays incredibly well, and incredibly tight, you can feel that the band has matured. The whole album, as Derek pointed out in his review, was basically a big middle finger to the music industry as a whole. As such they basically recorded what they felt sounded good, at the risk of alienating their fans.
The effect was pretty much completely the opposite, you’ll fall in love with the sincerity of this album, it sounds so organic. And that’s because it is, this is what Gentle Giant wanted to write, and it marks an early shift in their music. The whole album seems to flow through because of this natural sound, and as such nothing feels forced. None of the long instrumental passages get boring, because they’re not “showing off” but rather playing how they want to play.
Take the guitar solo on The House, The Street, The Room, it’s quite proficient yes, but Gary Green can do more complex stuff. This is just what he found sounded best, and what way to do that than through a 12 string wah-wah guitar solo straight from the heart.
The House, The Street, The Room
After the brief instrumental interlude of Aquiring the Taste comes quite possibly one of the most catchy tunes Gentle Giant have ever made. You’ll find it hard to not sing along to Wreck’s “Hey-yeah-yeah hold on”, I can’t contain myself that’s for sure. Combine this with a very catchy synth/guitar riff and you have yourself a massive winner. You’ll grow to love the little instrumental solos that occasionally sneak into the forefront. The beauty of it, as stated before, is that it’s music for the sake of music, not for the sake of “oh, every song needs a guitar/drum/keyboard solo dude!”
Nothing seems out of place here, and that’s the beauty of this album, while nothing is expected or boring either, it’s just that way because that’s how Gentle Giant wanted to make their album. So here we finally have a progressive rock album, that is completely sincere in its construction of music, nothing is there to “sound progressive” this is jus what they want to play. I know I’m hammering the point home, but it just makes this for such an enjoyable listen.
Overall this is a very very strong addition to Gentle Giant’s catalogue. You’ll find a heavier, more honest and straight forward Gentle Giant here, there’s not a lot of catchy vocals or lyrics like a lot of their other albums. But you’ll find lots and lots of catchy melodies and riffs. Overall it’s a lot stronger and more cohesive than their debut and as such does most certainly deserve a higher score.
9/10