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Gryphon — Live - A Sonic Tonic
(Talking Elephant TECD497, 2024, 2CD)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2025-07-15

Live - A Sonic Tonic Cover art

It’s probably a snowball’s chance in hell that Gryphon will ever tour the States again, so a double-live album is probably the next best thing. To be fair, there is a stuff out there on YouTube, but you can’t watch that while you drive around in your father’s car. One surprising fact for a band that is 52 years old — they still have three of the four original members. That would be Brian Gulland (bassoon, recorders, bass krumhorn, soprano sax, melodoca, keyboards, and vocals), Graeme Taylor (acoustic and electric guitars and vocals), and Dave Oberle (drums, percussion and vocals). Add to those three the three newer members: Clare Taylor (violin, keyboards and vocals), Rob Levy (bass guitar), and Andy Findon (Flute, piccolo, soprano krumhorn, soprano sax, clarinet, sweetheart fife). That’s a lot of different instruments, but if you know this band you’ll know why — they’ve been through many phases from their folky beginnings through a period as a rock band, followed by a long stretch of inactivity, then in 2007, after over three decades, they all got back together again and gave it another go, first as a live act and then in 2018 came Reinvention, the first new studio album of all new material, followed in 2020 by Get Out of My Father’s Car. What this two-disc live set really reveals is how tight this group is, the spirit, emotion and energy, and their sense of humor as well. This was all recorded at various dates on the band’s 50th anniversary tour in 2023, and released near the end of 2024. So what can the listener expect to hear? Most of the material covered comes from those last two albums, and a whole lot of songs from their very first self-titled album from 1972, as well as a near-eight minute piece titled “The Red Queen Muddle,” which seems to be mostly extracts from “Second Spasm.”  One highlight is the eleven minute “Haddocks’ Eyes,” a piece originally found on the Reinvention album. Fans of Midnight Mushrumps, Raindance, and Treason won’t  get anything from those albums, though what is here seems to be an excellent and representative sampling of Gryphon’s oeuvre.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Gryphon

More info
http://www.thegryphonpages.com

 

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