RAINDANCE

With this album Gryphon started to add vocals to their once instrumental sound. There is also more use of keyboards here. "Mother Nature's Son" is a cover of the Beatles tune. Nothing special and not much different to the original. "Le Cambrioleur..." is a short folky song with lyrics in French. Pure filler. "Don't Say Go" is another short song with some nice cowbell. This song sounds like Caravan.

Opener "Down The Dog" is my fave here. It begins with some cowbell and clavinet. A very fun and funky song but there are more symphonic sections too. Some organ and bassoon/krumhorn as well. Some cool sounding synths at the end. The title track has great synths with a single drum. It just builds and builds. The sound of a thunderstorm to end it. "Ormolou" has a New Wave style sequencer part with bassoon/clarinet/krumhorn playing as well. "Fontinental Version" starts out as an almost country-ish singer/songwriter type of song. It then goes into an almost Gentle Giant like part with a marching beat. It goes back to the earlier singer/songwriter vocal part. Then a great synth solo with the Gentle Giant part. Some krumhorn(?). Back to the marching beat. Then a folky section. Back to the vocal part but with some Mellotron this time. The Gentle Giant part gets briefly reprised before the song ends.

"Wallbanger" has some great bass. Some harpsichord and flute as well. The guitar playing sounds like Steve Howe. The Yes influence is most noticeable on the 16-minute "(Ein Klein) Heldenleben". It begins very classical sounding. Around 1 1/2 minutes in goes into a Yes-like part. Around 4 minutes there is a marching beat. It goes back to the classical section. Before 7 minutes there is a synth drone with a flute solo. Before 10 minutes there is a nice melody on flute/bassoon, etc. Then an electric guitar solo. 11 1/2 minutes there is a weird synth solo. After 13 minutes the nice melody comes back. It then goes into another Yes-like part with the same melody. Ends with a melody on glockenspiel(?).

Gryphon were never very consistent. Raindance does feature some of their best music along with more filler stuff. More diverse than but not as consistent as the instrumental Red Queen To Gryphon Three. Deserves 3 stars.