I have to say I'm surprised by the high praise this album is getting. Not that it's a bad record. It's just not a particularly great one. The most obvious feature of the record is it's indebtedness to the early 70s. It's gentle (as the title implies) psych-folk that is best used to soundtrack a sunny afternoon relaxing in the back yard with the intoxicant of your choice. It's a sound II have to say I'm surprised by the high praise this album is getting. Not that it's a bad record. It's just not a particularly great one. The most obvious feature of the record is it's indebtedness to the early 70s. It's gentle (as the title implies) psych-folk that is best used to soundtrack a sunny afternoon relaxing in the back yard with the intoxicant of your choice. It's a sound I enjoy quite a bit. However, the use of the word 'indebtedness' was intentional. Wilson wears his influences on his sleeve a little too obviously, skirting the fine line between influence and plagiarism. "Natural Rhapsody" could have appeared on Pink Floyd's Obscured by Clouds. "Canyon in the Rain" starts off sounding suspiciously similar to Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross." It gets to the point that spotting influences is not so much fun as it is a distraction from the music itself. Even so, none of the pilfering is anywhere as egregious as the blatant Neil Young ("Danger Bird") rip-off on Wilson's next album, Fanfare.
Influences aside, the songs on Gentle Spirit are mostly unhurried, pleasant, and full of hooks. One could lob the criticism that in fact, the hooks are a little too easy. There are no surprises here, nothing is challenging. Everything sounds just like you'd expect if you'd been paying any attention to classic rock radio for the past 3 or 4 decades. Every song is already familiar before you've even heard it. If this is a mild criticism of the music, (which I must say is very competently crafted and played on this record), it's certainly a fault in the lyrics, which skew towards quasi-mystical hippie cliches and worn out generic classic rock sentiments pretending at social conscience, which Johnson delivers in mostly a palatably spaced-out whisper.
All in all, that makes this an okay album, but nothing to get excited about.… Collapse