Gentle Giant Power & The Glory CD

Additional Tracks

Gentle Giant: Derek Shulman (vocals, saxophone); John Weathers (vocals, drums, percussion); Gary Green (guitar); Ray Shulman (bass guitar); Kerry Minnear.
Personnel: Ray Shulman (vocals, violin); Kerry Minnear (vocals, cello, keyboards).
Recording information: Advision Studios, London, England (12/1973-01/1974).
One of Gentle Giant's most successful albums, 1974's THE POWER & THE GLORY managed to sneak briefly into the U.S. charts, an unusual feat for the lauded, but never terribly popular, U.K. prog-rock band. Though the record is considered "accessible" by Gentle Giant standards, it is filled with the group's trademark break-neck time changes and bizarre vocal harmonies (the restless "Cogs in Cogs") with occasional moments of relative quiet (the serene passages of "Aspirations") rounding out the strangely fascinating proceedings.
The group's first U.S. release in two years featured ornate playing from Kerry Minnear on keyboards and Gary Green's loudest guitar work up to that time. Power and the Glory is also a fairly dissonant album, yet it made the charts, albeit pretty low. There seems to be a unifying theme having to do with one's place in the social order, but it's very vague in contrast to Pink Floyd's re-creations of the post-'60s drug experience, Yes' sweeping album-length suites, and ELP's sci-fi epics. "No God's a Man" is an infinitely more challenging piece of music than anything on Jethro Tull's Aqualung, but that wasn't a commercial virtue; nor could the electric violin break on "The Face" or the rippling electric guitar passages throughout cover the effort involved in absorbing these songs. Power and the Glory vaguely resembled Genesis' early art-rock albums, but without any presence as charismatic as Peter Gabriel. "Playing the Game" and "So Sincere" were the most accessible tracks and ended up as key parts of their concert set. The CD's sound is more than decent. ~ Bruce Eder
The Power and the Glory was the point where Gentle Giant abandoned the more obvious lyrical sound that had characterized the quieter moments of their earlier records. Starting with "Proclamation" and "So Sincere," they shoot for a combination of dissonance and virtuosity that leaves little in these two tracks resolved. "Aspirations" and "No God's a Man" mark something of a return to their earlier, more acoustic-driven and melodic sound -- both are showcases, to a greater or lesser degree, for Derek Shulman's singing and Gary Green's acoustic blues and folk playing, but they're merely quiet interludes surrounding the more intense riffing represented by "Playing the Game" and the keyboard-driven "Cogs in Cogs," with its layer upon layer of synthesizers. The remastering does bring out the nuances of the playing exceptionally well, so that one can vividly hear the action on the violin strings during the break on "The Face" and the swell of feedback off of one (or more) of Gary Green's guitars. And John Weathers' drum kit sounds like it's in the room with you on the original album closer, "Valedictory." The live version of "Proclamation" from a 1974 German television appearance is far superior to the studio rendition that opens the album, the group's involvement in pulling this off on-stage making all the difference in overcoming the inherent coldness of the music. And as an added bonus, the makers have appended the unreleased studio cut "The Power and the Glory," which never made it onto the album of this name -- it's actually more accessible than much of what did make it onto the record, and its presence, along with the live track, mark a significant improvement over the original. ~ Bruce Eder