In a Glass House
I am not a particularly reminiscent person, but listening to Gentle Giant’s In a Glass House brings me back to a magical time from my childhood. In particular, I remember driving around Long Island, New York with my father in his early 1980s Dodge Colt hatchback. The audio cassette tape copy of the record was black with a TDK sticker, gold with slight water damage. Certain songs on the album still evoke visions of old New England Victorian houses, dead trees, winter weather, and cemeteries filled with rows of repeating white gravestones. That’s not to say my childhood was macabre, but these are the things I remember about listening to the tape in the car with my dad.
Looking at the image of the cover art reminds me of the old record sleeve. The sleeve itself was black with a cellophane cutout, which had the black silhouettes of the band printed on it. Inside the sleeve was a white cardboard paper insert that had the grey silhouettes of the band printed on it. The earlier CD prints (at least the import I bought from England) had the black silhouettes printed on the transparent jewel case cover and the booklet had the grey silhouettes. And the 35th anniversary reissue has a clear plastic cover on the CD booklet with the black silhouettes. But, I digress…
Gentle Giant
I would be hard-pressed to name a band I respect as much as Gentle Giant. This band laid the foundation for my own musical tastes and idiosyncracies. For most of their career, their music was uncommercial enough to never become wildly famous, but listenable enough that they had a string of great and interesting releases sustaining their full-time craft over the course of their 10-year history.
Each member of Gentle Giant was a multi-instrumentalist. Correction: each member was an unabashed multi-instrumentalist. Their live performances featured each member of the band moving from one instrument to another, often mid-song. Watch the following videos for rather breathtaking examples:
There are so many aspects of this band and it’s musicians that I cherish dearly. I often blame their influence for the odd timings and harmony of my own music. Their music ranges from chaotic discordance to hard rock/blues to beautiful and delicate medieval treasures… Sometimes in the same song!
From everything I have heard and read about these guys, they were extremely intense and critical about their performances. I think it’s a level of perfectionism few bands are able to achieve, let alone maintain and mature over a career. It’s clear these guys poured their hearts and souls into performing and writing, and probably to a fault. Near the end of the 1970s they entered a “commercial rock” period and quickly disbanded. My guess is they were frustrated at their lack of well-deserved global admiration and fame. I also guess that it’s the band’s own doing considered how overly-eclectic and complex their music is.
Let’s just say that whole notion resonates with me and my musical pursuits, although I could never write and perform music like these guys did.
The Runaway
The album opens with a distinctive sequence of shattering glass sounds that phase into a rhythmic loop, which then cross fades into an arpeggiated synth sequence. It’s not unlike like the beginning of Money by Pink Floyd, but I think GG’s version is cooler. The opening song is called The Runaway and clearly features the “Canterbury Rock” style of the band. Gary Green’s electric guitar part is more like a harpsichord backing lyrical story-telling of a man on the run.
Not long into the song are interweaving synth parts, recorders/flutes, soft-sung chant, and odd-metered almost-blues riffs in a cascading fugue-style rhythmic cycle, all followed by a wicked vibraphone solo. Ridiculous. Sometimes, it’s difficult for me to grasp whether the band was just so capable that these over-the-top combinations of rock and classical instrumentation and arrangement came simply to the band or if they were intentionally trying to set the bar higher for themselves and other prog bands.
Inmate’s Lullaby
Vibraphone, timpani, Rhodes keyboard, oddly-EQ’d vocals, strange harmonies, and lyrics as a first-person perspective of someone recently committed to an asylum. I think this is a rather wonderful piece of music, theatrically developing until the song ends in a din of vocal oddness and what sounds like the death of a timpani. Not being a person particularly attached to lyrics, I’m surprised at how often I think of the lyrics in this song. Perhaps it’s because I live and work among mad people who don’t yet realize they’re mad.
The overall feeling of this song is creepy/haunting. The subject matter isn’t terribly cheery either, but the tonality of the vibraphone and the periodicity of the phrasing is hypnotic and weird. “Jarring” is a good word to describe it.
Way of Life
Man, I just loved this song as a kid. Now as an adult, I am surprised at the speed and virtuosity portrayed by the various band members. Especially the bass part! (It does help that Ray Schulman played with a pick…) And the song so quickly transitions from speed-rock to whole-tone creepiness, then back to speed-rock. The second half of the song demonstrates one of Gentle Giant’s greatest strengths: the majestic power ballad. Rarely does the band evoke actual emotion, but when they get into ballad time, they tear the genre to pieces.
For more ballad examples, check out Last Voyage from Freehand or Think of Me with Kindness from Octopus.
Experience
Experience is my favorite Gentle Giant song, if only for the first half of the song, which I think reveals why they probably had a hard time generating much more than a cult following. Experience is complex to the point of being uncountable, has such a great groove, has perfect sound texture and blending of instruments, and is just beautiful. The reverb and the intro keyboard sound stir indescribably resonant feelings in me, especially with the lute-style acoustic guitar chord strums. I love everything about the song until it gets hard-rock-y. Then it kind of loses my interest.
That’s not to say that the rock part of the song is bad. By no means! It’s good rock music. Rock music just doesn’t keep my interest as much. That’s the funny thing to me about Gentle Giant. They constantly struggled between rock and odd prog stuff, like some sort of schizophrenic genius. Unsurprisingly, they go back to the awesome medieval stuff at the end of the song and close it out correctly.
For more “schizophrenic” songs like this, check out On Reflection from Freehand or Peel the Paint from Three Friends.
A Reunion
This song has sentimental value for me because it’s one of the first songs I learned on my dad’s acoustic guitar. I don’t remember much from my childhood but I do remember him showing me how to play this. The guitar was way too big for me and I could hardly use both my hands at the same time, but I leaned it nonetheless. I was probably 10 at the time, even though I had little personal interest in playing guitar at the time.
The song, outside of my reminiscence, is a pretty good, simple song. Probably one of the simplest Gentle Giant songs in their catalog. And it’s even a song my wife likes, so double bonus. The only complaint I have about this one is the “queer, quivering vibrato” (hat tip to Greg Koch there) of the violins, which I find to be somewhat unpleasant.
For a more beautiful, though darker, and still completely consistent listen in this style, check out Aspirations from Power and the Glory.
In a Glass House
What a great close to this album. Like An Inmate’s Lullaby and A Reunion, this is one of the internally consistent songs on the album. Cohesive from start to finish, this is a great acoustic/electric rock song. It took me many years to learn the acoustic guitar parts in the song, and I remember as a child thinking how virtuosic the parts in this song were.
Other Favorites
Other favorite songs include:
- Design from Interview
- The Power and the Glory (the whole album is great)
- Advent of Panurge from Octopus
- Too many others…
If you have Spotify, all their stuff is up there. So, check it out!
File under: Musicians