Acquiring the Taste

Taste

     

All of Gentle Giant’s early works are pretty much flawless and Acquiring The Taste is no exception. It certainly has its own unique flavour and is quite noticeably different from their debut, but is of course no less magical for that.

The 1971 album; which was their second, is perhaps the most blatantly diverse and progressive of the band’s early career. It is definitely a “grower,” so give it a few open-minded listens before making a judgement. If you don’t like it on first listen, with repeated spins you may well end up loving it.

The diverse and eclectic album first opens with the slow and passionate ‘Pantagruel’s Nativity,’ which boasts impressive lead guitar lines and moody keyboards, and covers a lot of ground in its brief duration. ‘The Black Cat,’ for example, is a great soft song with violin and some funky bass guitar. My two personal favourite songs on the record however, are the rocking ‘Wreck’ and ‘Plain Truth.’

‘Wreck’ is a powerful sea-shanty influenced song with amazing vocals and a catchy bass line, mixing rock and some quieter violin moments. ‘Plain Truth’ also mixes rock and violin but in a different way; in terms of hard rock, the song is the closest the band ever came to sounding like Led Zeppelin or Jimi Hendrix, but features an astounding Wah Wah guitar solo that on closer inspection is actually played on violin. On top of that, the chorus is also phenomenally catchy and will stick in your head for days.

The remastered edition is arguably pretty awesome, with great production and packaging; If you are going to buy this excellent classic album then at least you can rest easy in the knowledge that you won’t just be getting so hastily slapped together cash in, but rather an edition that some effort and care has gone into.

Overall, Acquiring The Taste is a very varied and perhaps slightly challenging album but one that rewards persistence and is worth checking out if you have any interest in the band at all.