In 1978, Gentle Giant did the one thing nobody expected from the most technically fearsome band in British progressive rock: they reduced the traditional length of their songs.

Giant For A Day is the sound of five virtuosos putting the odd meters and medieval counterpoint aside and going straight for the hook. Recorded across three London studios in the spring of '78 and produced by the band themselves, it delivers ten concise, sharply arranged songs - the swaggering title track, the new-wave snap of "Spooky Boogie," the aching "It's Only Goodbye" - with Derek Shulman's vocals front and center and Kerry Minnear's keyboards pulling the whole thing toward the radio.

White it remains an outlier in the Gentle Giant catalog, time and reflection has been nothing but favorable to it. This is the first official U.S. vinyl pressing since 1980, with audio sourced from Alucard's most recent