CIVILIAN

As with the preceding Giant For a Day and the first side of The Missing Piece, this certainly doesn't sound much like the Gentle Giant we know. But wait, stop a moment... imagine, if you will, that this isn't the last Gentle Giant, but the sole album from a band new project (perhaps you could dub it "Civilian" like the album title) which just happens to have the same personnel. Approach this like the bridge between New Wave and prog it was constructed as - imagine, say, Utopia playing CBGB's - and you might find this to be an intriguing and badly underrated work from a time of tumultuous change both in the music industry and critical tastes.

No, the Civilian-era Gentle Giant didn't last long - but in combining a few post-punk ideas into their music whilst retaining some of their older vocal harmonies, they end up producing something which wouldn't be too out of place alongside the early works of Twelfth Night or Pallas. Yes, it's Gentle Giant selling out, as was their previous album, but they're selling out even more interestingly here and of the three post-Interview studio albums they put out, Civilian is the one whose bad rap is perhaps least deserved.