Giant's second album was a significant leap forward in their development of what they would become from 1972 forward, they didn't make most of the inconsistencies that kept their first album down a notch from their pre-1977 catalog. In fact they proclaim in the liner notes:
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Originally Posted by Liner Notes from Acquiring The Taste
...It is our goal to expand the frontiers of contemporary popular music at the risk of being very unpopular. We have recorded each composition with the one thought - that it should be unique, adventurous and fascinating. It has taken every shred of our combined musical and technical knowledge to achieve this. From the outset we have abandoned all preconceived thoughts of blatant commercialism. Instead we hope to give you something far more substantial and fulfilling. All you need to do is sit back, and acquire the taste.
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They succeeded in every way possible on this, including their staggering unpopularity.
This is a deliberately suggestive cover, the only sex joke I've ever known Giant to make. The unfolded cover reveals that it's a peach, not a butt
The opening track, "Pantagruel's Nativity" (like "The Advent of Panurge" from Octopus, inspired by the books of "Gargantua and Pantagruel" by François Rabelais) is easily good enough to have been included on any subsequent album between Octopus and Free Hand IMO. The Giant trademark style is completely in place here
The use of discord becomes vastly more developed from the first album on "Edge of Twilight", a little short of offerings such as "Knots", So Sincere" or "Design" but still pretty damn close
I could use the usual music-over-album-cover YouTube here but I found a Muppets video & I just HAD to use it
Next is "The House, The Street, The Room", this is one majorly tripped out song with a bridge section that's about as heavy as Giant would ever be. NIGHTMARISH fan vid here, kinda Carroll meets Lovecraft animated by Tim Burton minus the production values
On the original vinyl record, the title track opened with one of those happy-accident things, a tape splicing error that started Minnear's keys below pitch, then the note bends upward to the correct pitch. I am accustomed to this opening and I looked for a YouTube that contained it. I was only able to find the "fixed" version that just sounds weird to me, but it was only about a second of the song anyway. This is a majorly lovely little outro to side one, and is used in the aforementioned "Excerpts From Octopus" track on Playing The Fool (but on two guitars played by Gary Green and Ray Shulman)
Side two opens with "Wreck", a good arrangement but the sea shanty element to this doesn't work *nearly* as well as the previously reviewed "His Last Voyage" from Free Hand, an example of how this album was oh-so-close to the fully developed Giant but juuuust barely short. I do love the recorder bridge but not so much the fade-out that leads into it, a little lazy by Giant standards
Another almost-developed-but-just-a-little-short track follows, "The Moon Is Down", this is still really good
*EDIT: I'm out of my f
ucking mind, this is one of the best songs on the album. Carry on...
The exact same thing can be said for "Black Cat", the bridge section being my favorite part but I enjoy the whole piece
The album concludes with "Plain Truth", like a lot of AtT it's really good but just a notch below what they would produce on the albums between 1972-1976. There is an instrumental bridge section that goes on a little long IMO. Also, I don't know if I would've used it as a final track, as good as AtT is there is a lack of "flow" that would be found on subsequent albums.
Their next album (Three Friends) completed the development of their unique sound and style which they never let go until 1977 when a failed attempt commercialism reared it's ugly head. The next album that was released in the UK but not stateside, and the best such at-the-time undiscovered record by my favorite widely hated prog band of the day, came out in 1973 but I didn't hear it until the end of that decade. In A Glass House review will be next.