My favorite album by one of my favorite bands. It has everything that’s best in the art of Gentle Giant: exceptional technique (both instrumental and vocal) and compositional abilities, but above all, imagination, inventiveness, unpredictability, all while maintaining a strong melodic sense and an incredible rock "punch"; these guys had an amazing groove. They played everything and anything, always like gods, making you move your butt too. Never in this album is the virtuosity so self-serving as to cancel out the fun and engagement of listening: just look at the quirky instruments that peek in "The House, The Street, The Room" and seamlessly flow, as if it were the most obvious transition in the world, into a sensational wah-wah guitar solo by Green, making you find yourself doing air guitar while contorting on the floor. In short, they were phenomenal. Then the spine-tingling mood swings in "The Moon is Down," the tributes to Rabelais ("Pantagruel's Nativity" after all, they are Gentle Giant, right), the epicness of "Wreck" (with other minstrel-like tear-jerking moments), etc. This is the album of a lifetime.
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