Acquiring The Taste 1971

"Here I am, writing a review for Gentle Giant's "Acquiring the Taste", it is hard to find words to describe it. But that's just how it is. It's very hard to describe Gentle Giant in general. Sure, they are a prog band, but they still never sounded like any other band I've heard. A good way to describe their sound would be... Well, paint yourself a picture of a regular song. A pop song, a rock song, whatever, just a regular song that Gentle Giant wrote. Now, when Gentle Giant writes these songs, It's like they turn them inside-out, you know, up is down, east is west, you get the idea. And this style is very apparent on this particular record.

Most of these songs can be very hard to get used to. Everyone I know that has listened to, for example, The House, The Street, The Room thought of it like "A cool hard rock song with a great solo". But then they add "But I hated it when they were being all weird with their thousand instruments. That's just pretentious". When you listen to that song, you know that it could have been a hit, but Gentle Giant had the balls to make it weird, to make it fucked up, to make it Gentle Giant .

There are many great melodies to be found. Particularly on the two opening numbers, which are some of the best Gentle Giant has written. The second side pales a bit in comparison, but is stellar nevertheless. This is not Gentle Giant's greatest record, but it is very satisfying to listen to if you want something different."