ACQUIRING THE TASTE

First thing first- the cover art to "Acquiring the Taste "is far and away the most TASTEless cover ever to grace a Gentle Giant LP. it's really a peach not a....OK we all get it -tee hee.

As for the music, this album represents a huge progression from the eponymous debut.Relatively straight forward rock, blues and folk is replaced here with rampant experimentation which informs the overall sound of this album. When it works the music is just fantastic-when it does not it can all be a little dare I say it grating.

The opening track "Pantagruel's Nativity" is just superb-melodic, complex and engaging.I particularly like Gary Green's fluent guitar breaks.One of the best songs they ever recorded.'The Edge Of Twilight: is quite haunting and very eerie. "The House,The Street, The Room" starts off really well with a big fat driving riff but the ending of the song which is disjointed and incoherent - possibly an early attempt at interlocking instrumentation- something that they excelled on with later albums. Here it just seems clumsy and frankly a little irritating.The actual title track despite this album's MO is ironically quite a playfully accessible all too brief tune sounding Medieval without actually being Medieval. "Wreck" is a a sea shanty-like song with a great loping riff but leavened by some more medieval -like recorder led instrumentations."The Moon is Down" is another atmospheric song with a particularly engaging instrumental break."Black Cat" starts as a deceptively complex song with the madrigal like singing- something that the band would continue to explore on later albums before reaching its full development with "On Reflection" on the Free Hand LP.The instrumental break which starts at the one and a half minute mark is all over the place though- overtly complex and frankly just a bit too clever for the point of being clever, although the crazy noodling eventually resolve itself back to the original more straightforward main riff.The closing track, "Plain Truth" is actually a fairly straight forward rocker and would not be out of place on their debut.

Overall, this is an excellent album but one which requires repeated listening to fully appreciate.

4 stars

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