GRACIOUS! / THIS IS ... GRACIOUS!!

The gracious debut album ("!") I reviewed two years ago. I have this double edition but the second album has always been less interesting to me. It is not as colourful, ie. full of ingredients of various music genres, as the debut, but in a more typical hard/prog rock field of the early 70's. Vocals and sound - organ and Mellotron included - could be compared to URIAH HEEP. You get an album- side long epic here, but I think it's quite forced into its 21,5 minute length. I mean the best parts are basically two songs, 'Say Goodbye to Love' and 'Prepare to Meet Thy Maker', and the instrumental-oriented first half has some filler-like moments, especially the useless intro. The four remaining songs (Side Two of an LP) are quite easily forgotten after listening. 'C.B.S.' gets some air under its wings when it enters the jazz rock territory but for 7 minutes you might expect some more progressiveness. 'What's Come To Be' is a soft nice song.

The leaflet tells the unhappy story of this promising band. Only for the record company it apparently wasn't promising enough, because they finally released the second album on some cheapie series when the band itself had already collapsed, due to the lack of sufficient income. The interviewed band members also tell about the new (at the time) release, yet unnamed. But I doubt if it's wise to call it a Gracious album without the original singer or keyboard player.

So, my three stars point at the latter album I'm talking about here. (Though it might be more logical to rate a double issue as high as the BETTER one.) Anyway, considering both of these albums you'll get a good deal of interesting vintage prog if you find this friendly prized(?) package. With better circumstances Gracious could have made it much bigger.