OUT OF THE WOODS - THE BBC SESSIONS

First, the bad news: the first two tracks on Disc One are monophonic. After that, it's smooth sailing, with good sound quality and fine performances. There are occasional glitches in the production, but nothing major. All in all, one of the best available "live" releases by Gentle Giant.

Great performance and creativity deployment. Musically this album is excelent, this is probably his best live album since 'Playing The Fool', here they gave all they had to give. However, the sound quality isn't the best and the one you hope. This is the only reason why I gave four stars instead of five. But I really like this album... RECOMMENDED!

This is not quite a live album. The selections are from four different BBC in-studio performances. So, even though the tracks were performed by the band as a whole, as opposed to multi-tracked, they are not in front of a live audience, other than the radio personnel.

That said, having such fine recordings of live arrangements is a good thing. And, here we get our first release of City Hermit, a track left off of the first album. I must agree with the band, that song does not seem to fit in with what was released at the time. But it is not a bad song. A bit rough around the edges, the song is primarily a Kerry Minnear organ extravaganza. For the entire song, he plays with a fire you rarely hear in GG's mostly ensemble arrangements.

As for the rest of the album, the songs are great. And without the audience, all the intricacies of the arrangements come through loud and clear.

Last time I checked, there were close to TWENTY live and/or BBC session albums by Gentle Giant. So it might get a little difficult for newcomers to figure out which one(s) to get.

This is one of 'em.

"Playing The Fool" is their best live cd in terms of performance, sound quality and song selection. (If you don't have that one yet, come back here in three weeks after you've digested that gem...;-) And their "King Biscuit Flower Hour presents..." cd is another fine product. But I like this "Out of the Woods" cd a lot, partly because the band always finds a new wrinkle to throw into these already great songs, and also because this is about the only place you'll find the 5-minute opener "City Hermit". That song is in mono, and not on the same level of sound quality as the rest of the album - but still quite adequate, and the song itself is a worthy addition to your GG catalogue. Ya needs it.

Not much more to say - it's live Gentle Giant, so it's great. I think it's one of their top 3 live cd's. There - I did the research for ya...