INTERVIEW

After six albums of GENTLE GIANT that I totally considered masterpieces "Interview" is slightly less interesting than its predecessors, but it is nothing of a bad record, actually, I believe this album is very unfairly underrated.

Starting with the song that names the album, GENTLE GIANT brought back a lot of the style of "The power and the glory" and "Free hand", I wouldn't be surprised if somebody told me this song was meant to be part of one of those two records; the quality and originality of the composition it's not less than I would expect from them. "Give it back" is a very interesting song, at first sounds like something made by TALKING HEADS, but this record was published one year earlier than the debut of David BYRNE's project; this is a slow song with a lot of presence of the xylophone, kind of weird even for the GENTLE GIANT's catalog, very unprecedented.

"Design" starts with a classic vocal play, not as elaborate as the one in "Knots", but still pretty good; after that, it has a main percussion section through which the vocalizing continues giving it a very unique style. "Another show" changes the mood of the album being a complex and aggressive piece; the song is fast with a very powerful organ line, also the bass has a strong presence in the song. "Empty City" starts with a very harmonic acoustic section that reminds me a lot of "Raconteur Troubadour", then it changes into a rockier section with an elegant sax line.

"Timing" is probably the song that I like the less in the whole record: kind of slow and with a lack of enthusiasm, the violin line sounds folky while the rest of the instrumentation sounds a little funky, nice guitar solo though. Finally, we got "I lost my head", which is probably the most famous song on the record since it was part of the catalog in "Playing the Fool", in here the introduction features the classic medieval style GENTLE GIANT had shown in several songs in their previous albums only to switch into a totally different final part with a strong rock line, a total classic in GENTLE GIANT's repertoire.

Even when "Interview" doesn't include a lot of the greatest songs in the story of GENTLE GIANT, I really feel this is an underrated album, not one of my favorites but still a great acquisition in any Progressive Rock collection.

SONG RATING: Interview, 5 Give it back, 4 Design, 4 Another show, 4 Empty city, 4 Timing, 3 I lost my head, 5

AVERAGE: 4.14

PERCENTAGE: 82.86

ALBUM RATING: 4 stars

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