GENTLE GIANT

From the very start, Gentle Giant were a rare accumulation of talent and potential. Formed in 1970 by six experienced musicians from different backgrounds, all of which except the drummer could sing and play a variety of instruments and four of which were songwriters, their eponymous debut album saw them testing what they could make of their different influences and unique skill sets, only to find out that the answer was "everything". As usual with debut albums by talented artists, this willingness to try out anything works both to their advantage and their disadvantage. On one hand, the band demonstrates its high standards of songwriting and performance, and the diversity of musical styles and instruments is impressive. On the other, it's inevitable that they occasionally misfire.

But first a word about the band members. The core of the group are the three Shulman brothers, who had previously been part of the 60s pop/soul outfit Simon Dupree and the Big Sound. Derek Shulman is the group's lead vocalist, at least on most songs. Within a certain range, he has a very powerful voice, which he utilizes very well on the album's heavier numbers such as "Giant" and "Why Not?". Unfortunately, he's not the most expressive of singers and his voice is somewhat strained in higher registers, which might be one of the reasons why Gentle Giant are often misconstrued as cerebral and unemotional. Thankfully, the band has two more lead singers, which allows them to only use Derek where appropriate. The softer voice of his brother Phil is perfect for ballads like "Funny Ways" or "Isn't It Quiet and Cold?". He also contributes several wind instruments, namely saxophone, recorder and trumpet, which flesh out the arrangements in often unusual but always suitable ways. Third brother Ray Shulman is the group's amazing bassist, whose work on "Giant" alone should earn him the title of "greatest counterpoint bassist ever". He has the rare talent of being "everywhere", but not "all over the place", if you catch my drift.

While the Shulman brothers are undoubtedly the leaders of the group, the other members are far from mere sidemen. Kerry Minnear is the group's keyboard wizard and one of their primary songwriters. His classical training is what allowed Gentle Giant to write astoundingly complex songs full of polyphony and counterpoint within the compact format of a pop song, something that is still rather toned down on the debut but would become one of their defining features later on. As a keyboardist he's often overlooked because he's very much a team player and his parts are often complex in a non-flashy way, but his extremely broad palette of sounds, ranging from piano to harpsichord and from mellotron to the eerie synthesizer in "Alucard", was always essential to the group's sound. He also has very delicate, almost angelic voice, which would become one of the band's greatest assets when Phil left, but here his only lead is in the middle eight of "Why Not?".

Gary Green is the guitarist, and although he doesn't compose, his blues background is more important to the band's sound than you might think. Apart from the fact that the other guys give him tons of excellent licks to play, his guitar solos are frequently the highlights of any given song, and without him the group would be lacking much of its emotional core and directness. Martin Smith, then, had the bad luck of being "merely" a capable drummer in a band where everybody else was not only a multi-instrumentalist but also contributed massively to the group's sound, and that coupled with the fact that he left after the second album has led to him being unfairly ignored. There's a certain looseness to his drumming that works especially well on midtempo rockers such as "Why Not?" or the next album's "Plain Truth" and he strikes more of a balance between energy and detail, whereas the group's two subsequent drummers would shift the balance further in either direction. And for what it's worth, he does get to play some xylophone on "Isn't It Quiet and Cold?".

As you can see, this band would have had plenty of tricks up their sleeves already if they had only stuck to their main instruments, but on top of that they also add acoustic guitars, flutes, strings, percussion and lots of backing vocals into the mix. This allows them to arrange and perform pretty much any crazy idea they might have, as you can hear to some degree on all of the album's songs. Most notably, "Funny Ways" is a gorgeous ballad with memorable vocal melodies, but what makes it unforgettable is the way they arrange it. Not only do Derek and Phil handle the vocals beautifully, emphasizing each singer's strengths in exactly the right places and harmonizing beautifully in others, the instrumental arrangement is also astounding. It starts out quietly with acoustic guitar and strings, then suddenly moves into an upbeat, latin-tinged section which gains more and more layers until it explodes in a full band arrangement of the main theme, with Gary Green playing a guitar solo that will make you cry. The song then returns to the opening arrangement and concludes as quietly as it began. Like almost everything on this album, it's not perfect (the middle section does feel a bit out of place and the trumpets during the guitar solo are kind of silly and take away from the emotional effect of the solo itself), but these flaws are easy to overlook.

The other "non-standard" song is "Isn't It Quiet and Cold?", a kind of gimmicky music hall parody that doesn't thrill me that much, but there's something charmingly silly about the string-laden arrangement, the Beatles-like harmony vocals in the middle eight and the xylophone solo. Plus, the little melodic twist at the end of each line in the verse, where Phil repeats the word "alone", is a clever touch that not many bands would have come up with. Later efforts such as "Dog's Life" and "Black Cat" would be more successful at integrating whimsical English humor and strings into the band's sound, as here it seems a bit out of context, but it's still a nice song.

The rest of the material is much more rock-oriented, and especially the second side of the album is more in a 70s classic rock vein than anything the band ever did. This isn't necessarily a bad thing though. The blues-rocker "Why Not?" may be the album's least unique song stylistically, but it more than makes up for it with an excellent riff and powerful vocal performance that pits Derek against the rest of the group. The calmer mid-section stands in direct contrast to the verses, with a medieval-tinged melody played by recorders and Kerry's only lead vocal, and the way the band segues out of it and into an rip-roaring Gary Green solo is ingenious. Again, there are a few questionable decisions, namely the generic boogie coda and awkward phrasing such as "Why not hate someone who climbs a hill with you?", but the song is great nonetheless. "Nothing at All" begins as a gorgeous ballad that kind of foreshadows "Stairway to Heaven", with acoustic guitar interplay and the greatest "straightforward" vocal harmonies this band ever put to tape. It then gradually builds up into another rocker with a menacing riff until the band makes the unfortunate decision to have a three minute drum solo with processing effects and some piano improvisation before returning to the beginning. This segment doesn't ruin the song, but it does make it a bit inconsequential.

The two remaining songs on the first side are more in a typical progressive rock vein. "Alucard" clearly borrows from King Crimson's "hard rock with a saxophone" tunes ("Pictures of a City", "21st Century Schizoid Man"), but where these songs were abrasive, this one is eerie. This is done splendidly well, with an unsettling riff, weird synthesizer drones and a truly terrifying combination of backwards echo and odd vocal harmonies in the verses. It moves through a lot of variations in its six minutes, and though it may not be as catchy as some other songs, it's a powerful experience. "Giant", then, is completely off the wall, combining a majestic performance by Derek that is only matched by the guitar riff that follows each of his lines with such diverse elements as horns interjections, tons of awesome bass lines, an almost groovy vamp and majestic mellotron breaks. The end result is the album's finest moment, a truly epic track that gets Gentle Giant's career off to an excellent start.

The same can be said about the whole album, really. In typical GG fashion, it covers a lot of ground, combines disparate elements into coherent and memorable songs and features magnificent performances from everybody. Yet in several respects the band I know and love hasn't fully arrived yet: Compared to what was about to come, this album is still rather tame. The songs are comparatively straightforward and not nearly as multilayered as they would soon become, and although a lot of different styles are tried out, the band is still reluctant to put too many different things in one song, instead preferring to explore each idea one at a time. Despite that, all songs except the closing "The Queen" (a rather uninspired and pointless rock version of "God Save the Queen") are great, barring some questionable decisions here and there. This makes for a promising if slightly flawed debut that provides its own thrills while pointing the way to the future. Anyone new to Gentle Giant is advised to start here and simply work their way forward chronologically.