AMG Review of Gryphon/Midnight Mushrumps

Bruce Eder
All Music Guide

Gryphon was still a quartet at the time of their debut, without a full-time keyboard player. The material is essentially progressive folk-rock -- elements of jazz and swing ("Over the Rainbow" even turns up interpolated in the arrangement of one number) juxtaposed with traditional folk songs ("The Unquiet Grave," ka "Dives and Lazarus"), works attributed to Henry VIII, and folk-style originals. The group was still doing some folk-type vocal numbers on Midnight Mushrumps, their second album (also on this disc), but it was clearly moving in the direction of progressive rock. The 18-minute title track by Richard Harvey took up one whole side of the original LP, and incorporated medieval, baroque, and classical-era influences in its structure.