Three Friends is notable as Gentle Giant’s first concept album, tracing the diverging lives of childhood companions as they grow into vastly different adult roles—a road digger, an artist, and a white-collar worker. It’s also the first album with drummer Malcolm Mortimore, whose jazzier touch gives the band an elastic rhythmic backbone. The arrangements are rich with interlocking vocal lines, angular riffs, and classical flourishes, but there’s a stronger narrative thread tying it all together than on earlier efforts. It’s a more warmer-sounding record, and a key moment in the band’s ever evolving sound.
1976 US reissue which repurposes the cover art from the band’s debut for some reason vs. using the better fitting original Three Friends cover art. The album has a lot of surface noise for the first 30 second of each side and it inexplicably disappears. The LP otherwise sounds good.
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