In his 2019 book Henry Cow: The World Is a Problem, Benjamin Piekut called the title "brilliant". He wrote that after Frith's experiences with Henry Cow's restrictive way of conducting themselves, which Piekut called, "clumsy, slow, inefficient, and inconclusive", the title Gravity refers to the "carefree music therein as well as the ponderous concerns of [Frith's former band] reflected in its rearview mirror." Music Frith called Gravity a "dance album", not in the disco/funk sense of its day, but a collection of "dance music" drawn from cultures around the world. The album features an array of rock, folk and jazz instruments, plus field recordings, clapping and "whirling", and has been described as a "musical hybridization" of "Latin percussion, calypso festivity, eastern-tinged percussion [and] Klezmer-like celebration". "The Boy Beats the Rams" opens Gravity with a burst of laughter followed by some tap dancing, "random" percussion and Frith's "distinctive keening" violin. On "Spring Any Day Now" Frith mixes a bossa nova rhythm with a North African melody. "Don't Cry For Me" features Greek mandolin with heavy metal guitar. "Hands of the Juggler" draws on Middle Eastern folk dance, "Slap Dance" is a Serbian "folk romp", and "Career in Real Estate" is in the tradition of a Scottish fiddle tune. "Dancing in the Street" is a "de/reconstruction" of Martha and the Vandellas's 1964 hit that includes a "bizarrely harmonised guitar" playing the song's melody over a "boiling mass of feedback" and tape manipulation. According to the album's sleeve notes, this track also includes a recording of "Iranian demonstrators celebrating the capture of American hostages". "Crack in the Concrete" features an e-bowed guitar over "edgy, dissonant chords" and a "massed kazoo choir of horns" that presages Frith's experimental rock band Massacre he formed in New York City in February 1980. "Norrgården Nyvla" flows into "Year of the Monkey" which ends with a brief sample of the 13th Puerto Rico Summertime Band, "ten seconds of the real thing" according to the LP liner notes. Reception and influence In the January 1983 edition of DownBeat magazine, Bill Milkowski wrote that in contrast to Art Bears's "bleak attitude", Frith's Gravity is a "truly joyous solo LP, ... an extremely warm, almost whimsical album". Thomas Schulte at AllMusic described it as an "entertaining and multicultural pocket folk festival" and said it was "one of the most important guitar-based, experimental guitar titles from the avant-guitarist". In a BBC Online