After Free Hand, they seemed to have made a conscious decision to tighten their sound, dropping the strings and woodwinds and other extracurricular instruments, and sticking with your standard vocals-guitars-keyboards-bass-drums. I still like Interview, but there are moments where I do feel that they hadn't really progressed past Free Hand, plus the structure of the album (a scripted "interview" with the band) gets a bit tedious upon repeated listenings. But there are still some very strong moments and some good songs.
The Missing Piece has some gems, but it does represent the first step firmly in a more commercial direction. Overall, not a bad album, but almost a different band from the early stuff. Pretty much everything from here on out was straight-on rock in 4/4, with the occassional 3/4 for variety. The only remnant of their early progressive sound is the dueling acoustic guitars, which show up here and there. Not exactly unique in the rock world, but they do it well, and it's nice to hear.
And as mentioned, Giant for a Day is considered by most to be their weak point, while they did come back and finish strong with Civilian, which is one of my favorites.