Gentle Giant-Acquiring The Taste (1971)

"Adquiring the Taste", Gentle Giant's second album, was the British band's first masterpiece, a work that placed special emphasis on the gentler side of this progressive giant after their impressive debut released a year earlier. Furthermore, there's also a simultaneous emphasis on the more terrifying side of progressive rock, giving the album an additional experimental essence: this album is designed as a true acquired taste, with strange yet captivating compositions, extensive use of challenging counterpoint, unusual and dissonant tempos, impressive choral arrangements, and a wide variety of musical ideas. By this point, Gentle Giant had already reached the full maturity of their own signature sound. While it's true that "Adquiring the Taste" doesn't align with the ideas of "Three Friends" (1972) or "The Power and the Glory" (1974), and isn't even as appealing as "Free Hand" (1975), it encapsulates and embodies the most exquisite original expression of Gentle Giant, with that delicacy and sophistication so characteristic of the essence of his music. "Adquiring the Taste" is composed of an anthological succession of tracks such as the captivating and elegant "Pantagruel's Nativity", the mysterious and eerie "Edge of Twilight", the astute "The House, the Street, the Room", and the bluesy "Plain Truth", all performed with boundless good taste and immaculate mastery. While the melancholic “The Moon is Down”, with its lyrical reflections on the passing of the day, cleverly contrasts with its more optimistic predecessor, “Wreck”, which seamlessly blends unrestrained vocals and Renaissance chamber music with infectious enthusiasm, “Black Cat” immediately follows, offering a succession of stunning string sections within a jazz-oriented context. These strings are sweet during the vocal parts and hauntingly dissonant during the strange instrumental interlude. It goes without saying that this album is a progressive rock masterpiece, one of the many that the London group would create throughout their brilliant career.