GRACIOUS! / THIS IS ... GRACIOUS!!

The gracious debut album ("!") I reviewed two years ago. I have this double edition but the second album has always been less interesting to me. It is not as colourful, ie. full of ingredients of various music genres, as the debut, but in a more typical hard/prog rock field of the early 70's. Vocals and sound - organ and Mellotron included - could be compared to URIAH HEEP. You get an album- side long epic here, but I think it's quite forced into its 21,5 minute length. I mean the best parts are basically two songs, 'Say Goodbye to Love' and 'Prepare to Meet Thy Maker', and the instrumental-oriented first half has some filler-like moments, especially the useless intro. The four remaining songs (Side Two of an LP) are quite easily forgotten after listening. 'C.B.S.' gets some air under its wings when it enters the jazz rock territory but for 7 minutes you might expect some more progressiveness. 'What's Come To Be' is a soft nice song.

The leaflet tells the unhappy story of this promising band. Only for the record company it apparently wasn't promising enough, because they finally released the second album on some cheapie series when the band itself had already collapsed, due to the lack of sufficient income. The interviewed band members also tell about the new (at the time) release, yet unnamed. But I doubt if it's wise to call it a Gracious album without the original singer or keyboard player.

So, my three stars point at the latter album I'm talking about here. (Though it might be more logical to rate a double issue as high as the BETTER one.) Anyway, considering both of these albums you'll get a good deal of interesting vintage prog if you find this friendly prized(?) package. With better circumstances Gracious could have made it much bigger.

This compilation that was released in 1995 contains both GRACIOUS! and THIS IS GRACIOUS! Each album is on one disc so in effect it is basically two albums in just one jewel case. I'm not keen on reviewing these types of compilations unless I have something relevant to express. In this case I just want to convey that the production of these albums is a bit lackluster being a little tinny and if I had the chance to discover these albums again I would have held out for the digitally remastered releases that were released individually. Still though if you happen to find this combo pack for a really decent price like I did I would probably go for it just to see if I liked it. I haven't heard the remastered versions yet but my experience is almost always that on prog releases it is a big improvement.