Ah Jethro Tull. Introduced to me by my dad, Tull are probably my second or third favourite band. Spanning blues, folk, synth, hard rock and 'world music', but it's easier just to call it prog.
Unfortunately I didn't buy these albums in chronological order. I started with Thick As A Brick (talk about jumping in at the deep end...), and after approximately 6/7 years, I finished the collection in April 2015 (July if you include Nightcap, which I will, along with Living In The Past, for the sake of selective completeness).
For the most part, I have much later versions of all of these albums which include various 'bonus tracks' and extra material. I'll try and stick to the album as it was original released for the main chunk of text, but will probably add a few words at the end if any bonus songs are worthy of mention.
Here is where I would normally put the band's line-up, but Jethro Tull have been through so many! The following is a highly selective overview of the main line-ups:
Ian Anderson - Vocals, flute, guitars and everything in between.
Mick Abrahams (1968 only) - Vocals and guitars
Martin Barre (1969 onwards) - Guitar
Glen Cornick (1968-1970) - Bass
Jeffrey 'Hammond' Hammond (1971-1975) - Bass
John Glascock (1975-1979) - Bass
Dave Pegg (1979-1995) - Bass
Jonathan Noyce (1995-2007) - Bass
John Evan (1970-1980) - Keys
About seven other people played keys at different times following Evans' departure
Clive Bunker (1968-1971) - Drums
Barriemore Barlow (1971-1980) - Drums
Between 1980 and 1984, three different drummers filled in at various points.
Doane Perry (1984 onwards, but with some breaks) - Drums
This Was (1968)
Ah This Was, so called because when it was released Jethro Tull no longer sounded like they did on the record. Both the only Tull album to feature Mick Abrahams, and the only one not to feature Martin Barre. Also, perhaps, the only Tull album not to be, in effect, The Ian Anderson Show.
Abrahams was an all out blues lover and player, heavily influencing this first record. Beggar's Farm and Move On Alone are both serviceable blues songs written by him. Cat's Squirrel and Serenade to a Cuckoo are both standard blues and jazz songs, neither of which pop out to me as being particularly good versions (see Cream for a better version of the former).
On Anderson's side, we have the laid back and bluesy Some Day The Sun Won't Shine For You. It's not bad, but it does sound a tad disingenuous coming from a bunch of middle class English white guys (well, Anderson's technically Scottish, but moved down south at a young age). It's Breaking Me Up is similarly slow and bluesy but doesn't leave a lasting impression.
However there are some indications of Tull's future sound in My Sunday Feeling, Dharma For One and A Song For Jeffrey. All except Dharma (which feels more jazz than blues), are rooted in a bluesy base, but unlike the previous songs mentioned they strive for more than blues - infusing some folky and Eastern sounds to make a proggier product.
Can you tell that this is my least favourite Tull album yet? It's not that I don't like blues, as Aerosmith (especially in the early days) are pretty bluesy. It's just that I don't think Tull do the blues very well (see me slightly change my tune when we get to Catfish Rising below...).
Stand Up (1969)
So Abrahams was out, and Barre was in. After losing 50% of Jethro Tull's songwriters, Anderson would go on to basically write 100% of everything from Stand Up to the present day.
Though one can detect a faint whiff of blues throughout much of the album, I think you'd be hard pressed to label it as such. Oddly, though each song definitely has its own personality, I often find myself thinking that most of the songs on Stand Up sound very similar. Perhaps it's the subtle world music influences which are weaved throughout the album...
The album doesn't have the greatest production quality ever (though better than a lot of other bands' first few albums), and there's a lot of acoustic guitar about. Anderson has started to experiment with different time signatures as well - I count six songs in 4/4 and four songs in either 3/4 or 6/8.
A New Day Yesterday and Nothing Is Easy are classic Tull songs, though both are made infinitely better live (see the versions on Nothing Is Easy: Live At The Isle Of White 1970 and Bursting Out). Bouree is a fun reworking of Bach's Bouree in E Minor, and has been a live staple for forty years, often worked in to Anderson's flute solo break.
We Used To Know and Look In To The Sun are slow introspective songs. For A Thousand Mothers is maybe my favourite song on the album, a reasonably aggressive and rocky number in 6/8. I really do like this album, but ironically I don't think it stands out from the rest of the Tull discography. But I think I'm in the minority here: Anderson considers this his favourite Tull album, and Aerosmith bassist Tom Hamilton considers it one of his favourite albums of all time (I think I remember that from the Aerosmith autobiography Walk This Way?)
The 2001 remaster has four extra songs. Living In The Past will be returned to under the album of the same name. Driving Song is probably the bluesiest song on the album, and works much better than the material on This Was. Sweet Dream is a fantastic slow, almost metal-like song, which has an even better live version on Bursting Out. 17 is a nice reflection on youth, though sounds extremely tinny. In all, I probably prefer the bonus tracks to much of the original album.
Benefit (1970)
Allegedly Anderson's least favourite Tull album, Benefit is often considered to be the darkest sounding Tull album. The lyrics are brooding and gloomy, the tempo is generally low, and the harmonies often sound dissonant. Musically, I'd say that Tull were still shaking off their blues roots, as Nothing To Say and Inside both feel rooted in the blues tradition. But we also start hearing some properly proggy stuff.
We open with With You There To Help Me, a 6 minute proggy number which starts with some hysterical laughing over a breathy flute. By the outro, Barre's guitar is in full force in probably the rockiest and quickest part of the album.
Play In Time is one of those songs which come to mind when someone asks me what 'prog' sounds like (see also Thinking Round Corners on Catfish Rising). Seeing as usually they won't want to commit to listening to a long song, this 3.50 length experiment is pretty good at conveying the genre. Borrowing the technique of having mad background noises from the outro of I Am The Walrus, the guitar and bass guide us through while the flute and keys do whatever they want and Anderson manages to sing a melody which doesn't quite fit over the top. Oddly it's only in 4/4, though the off-beats try to make you think otherwise.
On For Michael Collins, Jeffrey and Me, and Sossity You're A Woman, Anderson pulls out his acoustic guitar to give some levity to this electric-heavy album.
I would name check some other songs but, as Anderson has also admitted, there isn't a great deal of variety on Benefit. Most of it is pretty riff-heavy prog, with the odd bluesy or acoustic number. I do prefer this to Stand Up though, probably because I like riffs.
We have four bonus tracks here on the 2001 reissue (and even more on the 2013 remaster. Singing All Day is a pretty straightforward blue song which would sound at home on This Was. Witch's Promise is a bit more folky that much of the prior Tull songs (a sign of things to come?). Just Trying To Be (also a bonus track for Aqualung) is a nice, short acoustic song. Teacher has an annoyingly catchy chorus, and may well be my favourite song on the album.
Aqualung (1971)
The concept album that isn't a concept album. The most popular and best selling Tull album. This is Aqualung. A mix of acoustic and hard rock songs, with lyrical themes exploring the urbanisation of the countryside, and the difference between god(s) and religion. You can see why most people consider it to be a concept album, despite Anderson's protestations.
The title track, which starts us off, is a pretty good summing up of the album's sound: flitting between soft acoustic sections and speedy guitar sections, the song seems to concern a pervy homeless man and his pathetic life. Even my friends who are most resistant to Tull admit that Aqualung is a decent song.
Cheap Day Return, Mother Goose, Wond'ring Aloud and Slipstream are the four acoustic songs. It's always baffled me why they went with Wond'ring Aloud for this album. On Living In The Past, a song called Wond'ring Again was released which contained the unreleased parts of Wond'ring Aloud. Then on almost every later 'special edition' of Aqualung, one of the bonus tracks would fit these two songs together to make Wond'ring Aloud, Again - which is a fantastic and vastly superior song than the small section they used for the original album.
Cross-Eyed Mary is an odd rocky song about a schoolgirl prostitute, later covered by Iron Maiden as the B-side to The Trooper. I quite like the music arrangement to the Maiden version, but it misses the flute and Dickinson's voice really doesn't fit the low melody.
My God, Hymn 43 and Wind-Up are the songs most explicitly aimed at religion and its hypocrisy. Interestingly, it seems that Anderson censored himself on My God, as the original version played live on Nothing Is Easy: Live At The Isle Of White was much more brazen about its references. The changes are:
'and the graven image Catholic'
to
'and the graven image you know who'
and
'the Jewish, Christian, Muslim is waiting to be free, each claiming to a part of Him, and so a part of Me'
to
'The bloody church of England in chains of history, requests your ugly presence at the vicarage for tea'.
Perhaps Anderson felt he should focus his criticism to one religion rather than dilute it? Fantastic flute solo though.
Locomotive Breath is another classic Tull song, opening with a jazzy piano which is later joined by Barre's guitar, it eventually turns in to a punchy rock song which uses a steam train as an allegory for a man's life falling apart.
There are a lot of gems hidden among the bonus tracks to various Aqualung rereleases over the years. As well as the aforementioned Wond'ring Aloud, Again, there's the humourous Lick Your Fingers Clean (later reworked for Warchild) and the playful Blackpool scene setter: Up The 'Pool. Life's A Long Song and Dr Bogenbroom are both also pretty good, as is the instrumental From Later and acoustic Nursie.
Overall a great album whether you consider just the original songs, or the added ones as well.
Thick As A Brick (1972)
Now, what the hell am I to say about TaaB? Anderson, being somewhat irked by everyone calling Aqualung a concept album, thought 'You thought that was a concept album? I'll show you a real concept album!'.
TaaB is an epic poem written by the 8-year old Gerald Bostock, which Tull took and put music to. Well, that was the joke anyway - in fact Anderson wrote the entire thing, but a surprising number of fans and critics believed it at the time! As a result, the lyrics meander around themes of growing up, superheroes, families. I don't know, it's hard to work it out at times without reading them.
It's a bit of a cheat, seeing as TaaB is one long unbroken(ish) piece of music, but this is easily my favourite Tull song. It's also probably the first Tull album that is unashamedly and loudly PROG. Time signature and tempo changes, a mix of instruments, and musically defying any genre categorisation one might try to fit. We get bits of folk, rock, blues, eastern influences, jazz.
This was also the first Tull album I ever listened to all the way through. I'd listened to bits of Aqualung here and there and quite liked some of it, and the only other CD in my dad's Tull collection was this. He warned me it might be a bit much, but I listened to it anyway - and I've never looked back.
Living In The Past (1972)
Yes, Tull were so popular by 1972 that even after only five albums, they released a sort-of compilation. Of the 19 songs, 4 are exact versions taken from previous albums (A Song For Jeffrey, Bouree, Inside and Locomotive Breath).
The rest are a mix of singles which didn't appear on albums, B-sides, unreleased songs (most of which ended up on the rereleases of the relevant original albums) and live versions. By Kind Permission Of is a live version of an instrumental written by keyboardist John Evans, which never saw the light of day on any album (bonus track or otherwise). It's very jazzy, but otherwise a bit forgettable.
The only other songs not previously mentioned are Love Song and A Christmas Song. The former is a rocky/bluesy song that could have fit in to This Was or Stand Up. The latter is a fun, sarcastic song about the fact that Christmas has lost its religious roots: 'The Christmas spirit is not what you drink'.
A Passion Play (1973)
Hot on the heels of one album length song, Tull thought they'd do it again sans the humour. A Passion Play began life as a totally different project (see Nightcap and the discussion of the Château D'Isaster tapes), which was scrapped almost in its entirety, though some bits made it on to APP, whilst other songs were rescued and reworked for Warchild.
APP itself is a play on the classic 'Passion Play' charting the journey of Jesus Christ. It depicts the journey of Ronnie Pilgrim as he dies and experiences the afterlife. He goes up to heaven, but finds it boring and its inhabitants obsessed with watching their still alive friends from on high. Following a request to try out hell, our protagonist descends to meet Lucy (Lucifer), but finds hell even worse than heaven. Ronnie flees until he finds a beach, with the ending being slightly ambiguous as to whether he finds contentment in limbo or ends up being born again. Not that you'd work out the plot from the lyrics, they're even more vague than TaaB! Instead the album's accompanying liner notes chart the story, while the lyrics and music follow and expand on them.
Musically, this is pretty far from TaaB. The guitars are much less prominent and there are few solos, while keys and synths are given much greater prominence along with some odder instruments (a marimba, saxophones, and orchestral sections). It feels both folky and classical, but with a hint of the 80s and sounds of the circus (see Warchild...). A much denser work than TaaB, it's probably also much more difficult to actually enjoy. But I do.
In the middle of the song, there is also a 5-ish minute spoken word interlude: The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles. Think Peter and the Wolf crossed with Peter Rabbit, but with more animal puns. This was thrown in as a nod to the comedies which often broke up real plays about Mr J Christ and his Passion.
The 2014 remaster of APP also included a complete version of the song which was attempted during the Château D'Isaster tapes - but I'll talk about this under Nightcap below.
Warchild (1974)
As mentioned above, Warchild features a great deal of material which was written and abandoned in the run up to A Passion Play. The album was initially meant to accompany a film, which never got financed (for the best, in my opinion). Unlike the previous two studio albums, Warchild returns to the standard 'bunch of songs' format, instead of just one long piece.
Following A Passion Play's lead, Warchild is probably the heaviest in terms of orchestral sounds of any Tull album (as well as saxophone and bagpipes...). This gives the album a grand sound, but one can't help but miss Barre's guitar which has been turned all the way down for most songs (except Queen And Country, Back Door Angels, and Sealion).
To me, this album sounds like it was heavily influenced by the sounds of a circus - helped by the photos included in the album's booklet which show Anderson as the ringmaster of a circus troupe. Queen And Country and Sealion in particular make me think of a Big Top.
Bungle In The Jungle is a fun song about the similarities between the human and animal kingdoms, while The Third Hoorah is a much more upbeat and circus-ey reprise of the title track. Elsewhere we have Only Solitaire, Anderson's satirical response to some critics' scathing reviews of APP and previous albums, and Two Fingers which is a circus-ey reimagining of Like Your Fingers Clean (a song which never made it on to the original release of Aqualung, or indeed Living In The Past). The lyrics fitting in to the religious critique present on Aqualung, one can't help feel that the message is lost in the new whimsical arrangement.
As per usual, later reissues of Warchild have some fantastic bonus material. Warchild Waltz and Quartet are purely orchestral, and were meant to fit in to the score of the abandoned Warchild film. They're not fantastic but are interesting.
Sealion II is a lyrical reworking of Sealion, sung by Jeffrey 'Hammond' Hammond. Again, it's interesting but ultimately gets annoying with its repeating the line 'Cecil the sealion' over and over.
The final three bonus songs are pure gold though. Rainbow Blues was thought good enough by Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore that he covered it for his solo project Blackmore's Night in 2003.
Whilst Glory Row feels like it could have slid in to Warchild easily due to its similar circus feel, Saturation is a much heavier song and was probably left off for that reason.
Minstrel In The Gallery (1975)
Minstrel In The Gallery marked a kind of consolidation of sounds. Keeping their new-found love of having orchestral pieces included in songs but leaving the elaborate circus behind, they returned to the half-acoustic half-hard rock of Aqualung.
There are only 7 songs on MitG. One is the 16+ minute Baker St. Muse, which looks and sounds like an attempt to revisit, but not redo, their two album-length songs. Lyrically the song is told from the first person, as the protagonist generally wanders around Baker Street in London and talks about what he sees and what used to be there - reflecting on his own life over the years. Musically, Baker St. Muse sounds like a cousin of TaaB, with acoustic and hard rock sections.
Two other songs break the 5-minute mark: the title track and Black Satin Dancer. The former is a fun Aqualung (the song, not the album) sounding song, opening with a slow acoustic section before stepping hard on the 'rock' pedal as Barre goes wild. The latter is the only song on the album which feels related to anything on Warchild, probably because much of it is in 3/4 and so has a waltzy air to it.
Cold Wind To Valhalla follows the title track in opening acoustic before turning heavy. It's a good song, but perhaps should have been placed further away from the title track (they are tracks 1 (Minstrel) and 2 (Cold Wind)) as they sound a little too similar.
The other three songs on the album I could probably do without to be honest. Requiem aims to be a touching acoustic/strings love song, but doesn't have quite enough substance for my liking. The following One White Duck/010=Nothing at All (yes, that's what it's actually called - seems like Anderson took some song-naming tips from Blue Öyster Cult...) is a much more interesting attempt at a love song, but I still think Tull sound a bit odd trying to do love songs.
We end with Grace, a very short (37s) acoustic song which the album probably wouldn't have missed had it been omitted.
The bonus tracks on reissues of MitG aren't quite the treasure trove they have been on previous albums. Summerday Sands was a single released along with the album (but wasn't on it), and works ok as an acoustic song. March The Mad Scientist is good but sounds unfinished. Pan Dance is an orchestral song from somewhere, unlikely to warrant many repeat listens.
Unfinished live versions of the title track and Cold Wind to Valhalla (2.11 mins and 1.30 respectively) could probably have been left on the shelf as well.
The 2015 remix has some much better (and complete) live versions of the same songs, and entire live concert from 1975 as bonuses, which are pretty great.
Too Old To Rock 'N' Roll: Too Young To Die (1976)
Not having learned their lesson from the failed Warchild movie, Too Old was originally intended to be the template for a rock musical. Needless to say, that never happened either.
Laying my cards on the table, this is my second least favourite Tull album next to This Was. Tull abandoned much of their heavier sound and doubled down on the acoustic. As such, I'll keep this bit short.
The title track and Quizz Kid are probably the rockiest songs on the album, and each are quite good though they don't hit the right beats for me - why wouldn't Barre let loose?
We get a blues throwback in Taxi Grab, a soft and slow acoustic song in From A Dead Beat To An Old Greaser. The rest kind of fall in to an empty forgettable album filler wasteland for me. Big Dipper wants to sound like a Warchild outtake, but fails. The whole album feels like the overarching story got in the way of decent single songs.
There are a few bonus songs on later editions. A Small Cigar is a very good minimalist acoustic song, while Strip Cartoon falls in to filler territory.
Songs from the Wood (1977)
Marking a complete change in direction for the band, SftW is an all out English-folk album. Following a stint producing Now We Are Six for folk legends Steeleye Span, and settling down in the English countryside with his wife, Anderson seemed to be compelled to join in. Songs about medieval times, magic and nature are the foundation of this album.
We open with the title track, a prog-folk piece which does much to introduce the rest of the album. Though maybe not the first, this is one of the first times that Tull had experimented with backing vocals and harmonies. It works surprisingly well.
Jack-In-The-Green is a fun acoustic song about a forest sprite. Cup of Wonder and The Whistler are both very heavy on the flute and tin whistle, playing up the 'ye olde english' sound, the latter probably being the most exciting song on the album. Hunting Girl and Velvet Green both open with introductions that could have been pulled straight from the theme songs of a BBC costume drama set in 1450.
Fire At Midnight is a wintry song that fits snugly in to the woodland theme. Similarly, the most popular Tull Christmas song - Ring Out, Solstice Bells - sits nicely in the middle of this album and is just poppy enough to make its way on to most Xmas compilation CDs.
Pibroch (Cap In Hand) is the album's 'long song' at 8.36 minutes, and is the least folky song by far. In fact it kind of sticks out rather awkwardly near the end of the album, and is much too stop-start to feel truly like a single song. Not a fan.
Bonus songs here include Beltane, an upbeat song about a beastie in the woods, and a live version of Velvet Green which doesn't add much to the studio version but is nice enough all the same
Heavy Horses (1978)
Heavy Horses is the second in Tull's 'Folk Trilogy'. Music-wise, Heavy Horses is almost identical to SftW. You could mix any 9 of the aggregated 18 songs together and nothing would sound out of place. Lyrically, Heavy Horses is slightly different. Not so many fanciful tales of woodland sprites and forest-themes, but instead we have a number of commentaries on the changing nature of the world (sort of in an 'urbanisation' way).
Having said that, we open with And The Mice Police Never Sleeps: an upbeat but dark song about cats hunting mice. The outro gives a particularly sinister vibe as Anderson speaks the title repeatedly on overlapping loops.
Acres Wild is my favourite track on the album, a really fun folk riff with lyrics that describe the changing nature of England's landscape.
No Lullaby and the title track definitely bring a much heavier feel. The former has screaming guitars throughout (the live version on Bursting Out is particularly heavy). The latter is a great 9 minute folk-prog epic about how the horse will have a resurgence once all of the oil runs out and we have to abandon cars (obviously written before the idea of hydrogen powered cars, but that doesn't take much away).
Moths, Journeymen, Rover and One Brown Mouse are each good songs in their own right, but none quite reach the quality of the previously mentioned ones.
Weathercock is worth a mention as this album's Christmas (well, 'winter') song, which gets resurrected for the Tull Christmas Album later on.
The bonus songs here are better than for SftW. Living In These Hard Times is less folky than the rest of the album, but thematically fits right in to the whole 'changing world' aspect of Heavy Horses. While Broadford Bazaar is a straight acoustic song which describes a northern town's marketplace. Delightful
Stormwatch (1979)
The final of the Folk Trilogy, and in my opinion the least strong of the three. In a kind of melding of the prior two album's themes, the lyrics on Stormwatch focus heavily on the environment and global warming. Rain and the weather are particularly prominent features.
We open with an extremely heavy handed song called North Sea Oil, in which the lyrical message overshadows the fun tune underneath. Home is a great acoustic track about longing for... well, Home. It reminds me a lot of Home Tonight by Aerosmith, or Home by Michael Bublé.
The two long songs are Dark Ages and Flying Dutchman, coming in at 9.14 and 7.46 respectively. Dark Ages is surprisingly forgettable, trying just a bit too hard to sound moody and proggy. Flying Dutchman is a much better effort, being driven by piano and strings in the verses but with bouncy acoustic choruses, and a reel-like instrumental breakdown.
Warm Sporran and Elegy mark a departure for Tull, both being instrumentals and the latter being written not by Anderson, but David Palmer (sometime arranger and keyboardist). The former is a fun jig-like piece, while the latter is a more understated acoustic/violin classic tune.
Something's On The Move and Old Ghosts evidence a rockier Tull lurking in the background, with the former being a particularly good Barre showpiece.
The bonus tracks on the 2002 remaster are possibly the best ones to ever be added. A Stitch In Time is a great folk song about the saying which begins with the same words. Crossword is a rockier song about a fast moving life punctuated by doing the daily crossword. Kelpie is about the mythical creature of the same name and is one of the most fun and upbeat folk songs ever written and it's a damned crime it wasn't included on the album in the first place. King Henry's Madrigal is another folk instrumental, which musically feels more Songs From The Wood-ish but I much prefer it to the two instrumentals which were put on the original album.
A (1980)
If Benefit and Aqualung marked sharp left turns from blues to prog, and SftW made sharper turns from prog to folk, then A is yet another turn and may well be the sharpest.
Black Sunday is the clear standout song on A, and is the longest coming in at 6.39. As with the rest of the album, the synth takes centre stage, but unlike the other songs it leaves plenty of room for Barre to solo and show off. Lyrically Black Sunday seems to be about the mundanity of airports and wishing that travel didn't take so long - but it sounds much better than that admittedly bad description.
In my opinion, these three above named songs constitute the only things worth listening to on the album. The rest of the album isn't bad, it's just very samey. Tracks 5-8 meld together in to a synthy mess, while the final track, And Further On, is a bit of a nothing ballad which sounds like a Minstrel In The Gallery outtake with added synth.
Broadsword and the Beast (1982)
If you tried to put all of Tull's albums in chronological order without previously knowing, you'd definitely swap A and Broadsword. Broadsword and the Beast marks a half-way house between the folk sounds of the Folk Trilogy and the synth pop/rock of A and Under Wraps.
We open with Beastie, a plodding hard rock song where the synth is relegated to background noise. The follow up, Clasp, is much faster paced, but is similarly hard-rock focused and synth-light.
Fallen On Hard Times, Broadsword and Pussy Willow could each sneak in to any of the Folk Trilogy without too much bother. The first is lyrically very similar to the SftW outtake Living In These Hard Times. The second has a grand Heavy Horses (the song) feel, but the harmonising guitar lines give it an 80s edge. Pussy Willow is heavy on the flute and keys, but firmly in the folk camp. Seal Driver is mostly folk, but takes a little too much inspiration from the 80s sound to fit in to one of the Folk Trilogy unnoticed.
Flying Colours is the synthiest and 80sest song on the album. Following a slow and melodic piano intro, the synth comes in full force and reminds me of Black Sunday from A. Watching Me Watching You also goes full synth, with multiple electronic sounds playing on repeat in the background - in my opinion probably the worst song on the album.
Slow Marching Band is one of the very few Tull acoustic/piano love songs, and mostly succeeds unlike most others due to the heavy use of metaphor rather than obvious lyrics. The album ends with Cheerio, a short song which was used as the closer to Tull concerts for decades (pre-encore, usually).
So... bonus songs? More than you can shake a (broad)sword at. There are 8! And most of them are good!
Jack Frost And The Hooded Crow is one of the best Tull (Christmas) songs never released (along with Kelpie from Stormwatch), and I was very pleased that it got revived for the Tull Christmas Album (see below).
I won't go through all of the other 7, but I'd say any could have been included in the album proper and no one would object. They are an eclectic mix of straight folk, folk-synth fusions, and straight synth-pop - just like Broadsword itself. In fact, bassist Dave Pegg once said that these outtakes would have made a better album than their next one...
Under Wraps (1984)
Amongst Tull fans, Under Wraps is easily the most contentious album, even if Crest of a Knave is the most contentious to everyone else (see below). Under Wraps has no real-life drummer, it's all machines. There is no hint of folk at all, and Anderson's flute is much less prominent. Unlike A, which kept some hard rock and folk influences, Under Wraps is a synth-pop (maybe art-pop/rock?) album through and through.
Also slightly annoying is pinning down which version of the album to use. The original vinyl release had 11 songs, whilst its accompanying cassette version had an extra 4 songs. The CD version also has all 15 songs, so that's the one I'll use.
I have a great deal of difficulty thinking of anything interesting to say about this group of 15 songs. My musical vocabulary doesn't extend to variations and sub-genres of synth-pop.
The most I can really say is... I actually really like Under Wraps. It's a terrible Tull album, but it's a very good 80s album. Anderson's nuanced and often cryptic lyrics are as present here as they are on any other Tull album.
My favourite song on Under Wraps is actually the acoustic, and completely out of place, reprise of the title track (Under Wraps #2), perhaps because it sounds like it could just have fit on to an album like Too Old To Rock 'N' Roll.
I'm glad Tull experimented. They wouldn't have been a true 'prog' band if they didn't actually try and progress rock music! Having said that, I'm also glad that their synth-pop period only lasted for 2-ish albums.
Crest of a Knave (1987)
The Grammy Award-winning album, Crest of a Knave ladies and gentlemen. This album infamously won best 'Hard Rock/Metal Performance' out from under Metallica, leading to outrage and confusion - Tull obviously being neither hard rock nor metal. Although, Crest does rock harder than anything else Tull released in the 80s thus far.
Following the very poor-selling Under Wraps, Tull returned to what they knew, but took with them the lessons learned from their synth-pop era. Also worth noting is that in between Under Wraps and Crest, Anderson suffered from a pretty severe throat infection which eventually resulted in him having throat surgery. As a result, Anderson lost a great deal of his vocal range, and so the vocals on every album from 1987 onwards are noticeably a bit more restrained and lower than they used to be.
Crest opens with Steel Monkey, a pretty hard rocking song with a pulsating synth-line and Barre's screaming guitar. Honestly, Steel Monkey could be a ZZ Top song from Eliminator if you didn't know better... In fact I'd love it if ZZ Top covered this. Jump Start is similarly heavy (but sans synth), though improved greatly during live performances due to an extra Barre-led breakdown at the end (see Catfish Rising). The closer, Raising Steam, is also a very Barre-led hard rock song with some background synth for good measure.
10-minute long Budapest is allegedly Anderson's favourite Tull song of all time. An eclectic melding of classic, bluesy and folky sounds, it reminds me again of Heavy Horses (the song). Unlike Heavy Horses, though, Budapest never quite reaches a crescendo. It just kind of keeps going until it ends. I should like this song because it contains all of the best things about Tull, but for some reason it just doesn't work for me.
The rest of the album is very good, though only Farm On The Freeway stands out. A classic Tull song, Farm On The Freeway runs through several sections of varying tempos and sounds and holds its own against anything on Warchild or Minstrel In The Gallery.
There is a single bonus track for anyone who has the 2005 remaster. Part Of The Machine is a much folkier sounding song, flitting between acoustic/flute sections and heavy electric guitar sections. It's nothing special, but it's a nice extra.
Rock Island (1990)
It's not clear whether this was done on purpose, but in the same way that Thick As A Brick was a response to everyone thinking Aqualung was a concept album, Rock Island feels like a direct response to the Grammys labelling Crest Of A Knave as a metal/hard rock album.
The opener, Kissing Willie, is very riff heavy and plays like a straight up hard rock song (with the occasional flute thrown in). And yes, Tull wrote and recorded a song called Kissing Willie... It's very euphemistically driven, and the accompanying music video is... worth a watch.
Undressed To Kill (no relation to the similarly titled KISS album...) is a slower song, but is equally tongue-in-cheek.
The rest of the album consists of quite straight-forward rock but with Tull twists. Whether it be a bluesy twist as in The Rattlesnake Trail, or a folky twist on Big Riff And Mando. As a result Rock Island is almost barely a prog album, though Ears of Tin and The Whalers Dues each involve some section breaks and tempo changes so the prog isn't completely lost.
Hidden in the middle of the album is a spiritual sequel to the 1969 B-side A Christmas Song, amusingly titled Another Christmas Song. It's similar in its slightly cynical view of Christmas, but Ring Out Solstice Bells is still the ultimate Tull festive song.
The 2006 remaster includes no outtakes, but adds three live versions of tracks recorded in the dressing room before a concert in Zurich, Switzerland. A Christmas Song is fine but not amazing. The medley of Cheap Day Return and Mother Goose is pretty great though, and the low key, keyboard free Locomotive Breath is an interesting oddity.
Catfish Rising (1991)
Keeping up their wave of rocking harder than usual comes Catfish Rising. Catfish is also the bluesiest Tull album since their debut This Was, though I'd rather characterise it as 'blues inspired' than giving it a blues label. In my opinion this is also the last Tull album where it sounds like they're properly going for it. As if the rockers in their mid-40s thought they wanted to prove that they could keep pace with the young 'uns. After Catfish, it's almost as if they gave in to their age. Not that that's a bad thing, but I love the energy on this album.
Like Under Wraps, Catfish had a number of different versions when first released. So I'll go through the 2006 CD version which has all of the songs from the different original pressings.
Roll Yer Own, Rocks On The Road and Sleeping With The Dog are the obvious contenders for 'most bluesy song' on the album. The first seems to be about longing for a cigarette (though perhaps I'm missing a metaphor?) and just asks to be finger-clicked along to. Sparrow On The Schoolyard Wall is also blues-sounding, but retains just enough Tull acoustic fiddliness to avoid the label.
The rockers on this album though, man. This Is Not Love, Occasional Demons and Doctor To My Disease are all played with such ferocity that you'd think Anderson and Barre had been half-asleep for the last 10 years! Each are better than any of the rockers on the past two albums.
Back on Benefit, I mentioned that there are some songs that instantly come to mind when someone asks me what 'prog' is. One of those is Play In Time from Benefit, another is Thinking Round Corners on Catfish. Although technically the entire song is in lowly 4/4 and is more or less the same tempo throughout, you couldn't play a click track to it. There is so much stopping and starting, very little of which is predictable unless you already know the song. Anderson's inflection is also very peculiar, and he spends a lot of time stuttering through lyrics, as if he's trying to sound silly on purpose. It's just a very strange song.
Still Loving You Tonight is one of the handful of Tull love songs, and is perfectly inoffensive, though I very rarely fancy listening all the way through.
In revisiting musical styles last seen at the beginning of his career, Anderson also dipped in to the Indian and world music influences last seen on Stand Up and Benefit. Tall Thin Girl definitely has an Indian guitar (not quite sitar) feel.
White Innocence is our long song, coming in at 7.45. Unfortunately like Budapest it just doesn't do it for me. A bit too slow, a bit too repetitive, and a bit too lackadaisical.
Gold Tipped Boots, Black Jacket And Tie is a super bouncy, proggy, Tull-ey take on the same subject matter made famous by ZZ Top's Sharp Dressed Man. One of my more favourite songs on the album.
A Night In The Wilderness is a weird blues/folk fusion, but is pretty forgettable in the context of the album.
When Jesus Came To Play is a bluesy revisiting of the themes from the latter half of Aqualung, with some amusing and cynical lyrical metaphors about Jesus playing a gig with Tull:
'He sang about three or four numbers, but we'd heard it all before.
We boys were getting restless: no girls were moving on the floor.Those parables, they were merciless and the tables overturned.
And there were no minor miracles, but false prophets they were burned.'
For some reason, the 2006 CD version of Catfish ends with a live version of Crest Of A Knave's Jump Start recorded in 1987. A much superior version than the studio one in every respect, it fits right on to this much rockier record.
Nightcap (1993/2000)
Like Living In The Past, Nightcap sort of works as Tull's second version of the Beatles: Anthology albums. An entire double album of unreleased (or rarely released) material. Yes, even with every subsequent re-release of an album containing more and more bonus songs, they found enough which hadn't already been used to make an entirely new album.
Well, I say entirely new... A reasonable amount of Nightcap was actually released on the 67-song-length 20 Years Of Jethro Tull boxset. However that boxset went out of production many decades ago, and pre-owned versions cost several hundreds of pounds - which is why I don't own it and haven't included it on here. The release date written above is 1993/2000 - this is because it was released in the UK in 1993, but the Yanks had to wait 7 more years to get their hands on it!
So what's on Nightcap? The first disc consists entirely of the Château D'Isaster recordings which were abandoned just before the recording of A Passion Play. For Nightcap these recordings have been split up in to 13 discrete songs and placed out of their original intended order, which is odd because the ultimate goal was to turn these recordings in to one single album-length song. Eventually, the 2014 remaster of A Passion Play would remedy this by creating a version of the original intended product by splicing bits of A Passion Play, Warchild and these Nightcap songs together. I do like having both though.
But what does Château D'Isaster, if I can call it that, sound like? Well it sounds like A Passion Play and Warchild. Lots of organ and lots of circus-sounds and imagery. The lyrics seem to primarily focus on comparing the human and animal worlds (a theme which returned on Warchild's Bungle In The Jungle).
I really like a lot of this first half of Nightcap, but it's pretty impenetrable for a Tull outsider.
The second half of Nightcap consists of 18 previously unreleased songs recorded between 1974 to 1991. The first 5 songs have previously been mentioned as Warchild, Too Old to Rock 'N' Roll and Heavy Horses outtakes. The other 13, however, had not been released anywhere else as yet (well, some might have also been on the 20 years boxset but I'll ignore that).
Broadsword-era Tull was extremely hard working. In addition to the 8(!) bonus songs on later versions of the album, Nightcap features a further 6! Almost all of which, like the 8, could have slipped on to Broadsword, if perhaps not as easily as those 8.
The Curse stands out due to its lyrics concerning a 13-year old girl's first menstrual cycle. Keep to writing lyrics about literally anything else Anderson.
Commons Brawl is a fun folk/synth song about the House of Commons and the verbal fights that occur within. No Step sounds more of an A outtake than Broadsword, being on the synthy-side of the Broadsword sound, which is perhaps why it was left off. The same goes for Drive On The Young Side Of Life.
Rock Island also gets 6 outtakes (none from Under Wraps or Crest it seems...). Man Of Principal sounds much too Too Old To Rock 'N' Roll to have fit on to Rock Island, but it's a good slow song. Hard Liner and Piece Of Cake on the other hand both sound perfect for Rock Island with their heavy reliance on Barre's riffing - not sure why they were left off. Silver River Turning and Rosa On The Factory Floor both hint at the bluesier future of Catfish Jumping, but they don't fit on Rock Island so probably a good decision that they were left off.
Finally there's a single outtake from Catfish Rising: Truck Stop Runner. A seaside-sounding acoustic song which doesn't fit the Catfish template at all. It's fun enough but you can tell why it was left off.
Overall, Nightcap is pretty great. Well worth it if you like either the A Passion Play/Warchild era of Tull, or the Broadsword era.
Well, I say entirely new... A reasonable amount of Nightcap was actually released on the 67-song-length 20 Years Of Jethro Tull boxset. However that boxset went out of production many decades ago, and pre-owned versions cost several hundreds of pounds - which is why I don't own it and haven't included it on here. The release date written above is 1993/2000 - this is because it was released in the UK in 1993, but the Yanks had to wait 7 more years to get their hands on it!
So what's on Nightcap? The first disc consists entirely of the Château D'Isaster recordings which were abandoned just before the recording of A Passion Play. For Nightcap these recordings have been split up in to 13 discrete songs and placed out of their original intended order, which is odd because the ultimate goal was to turn these recordings in to one single album-length song. Eventually, the 2014 remaster of A Passion Play would remedy this by creating a version of the original intended product by splicing bits of A Passion Play, Warchild and these Nightcap songs together. I do like having both though.
But what does Château D'Isaster, if I can call it that, sound like? Well it sounds like A Passion Play and Warchild. Lots of organ and lots of circus-sounds and imagery. The lyrics seem to primarily focus on comparing the human and animal worlds (a theme which returned on Warchild's Bungle In The Jungle).
I really like a lot of this first half of Nightcap, but it's pretty impenetrable for a Tull outsider.
The second half of Nightcap consists of 18 previously unreleased songs recorded between 1974 to 1991. The first 5 songs have previously been mentioned as Warchild, Too Old to Rock 'N' Roll and Heavy Horses outtakes. The other 13, however, had not been released anywhere else as yet (well, some might have also been on the 20 years boxset but I'll ignore that).
Broadsword-era Tull was extremely hard working. In addition to the 8(!) bonus songs on later versions of the album, Nightcap features a further 6! Almost all of which, like the 8, could have slipped on to Broadsword, if perhaps not as easily as those 8.
The Curse stands out due to its lyrics concerning a 13-year old girl's first menstrual cycle. Keep to writing lyrics about literally anything else Anderson.
Commons Brawl is a fun folk/synth song about the House of Commons and the verbal fights that occur within. No Step sounds more of an A outtake than Broadsword, being on the synthy-side of the Broadsword sound, which is perhaps why it was left off. The same goes for Drive On The Young Side Of Life.
Rock Island also gets 6 outtakes (none from Under Wraps or Crest it seems...). Man Of Principal sounds much too Too Old To Rock 'N' Roll to have fit on to Rock Island, but it's a good slow song. Hard Liner and Piece Of Cake on the other hand both sound perfect for Rock Island with their heavy reliance on Barre's riffing - not sure why they were left off. Silver River Turning and Rosa On The Factory Floor both hint at the bluesier future of Catfish Jumping, but they don't fit on Rock Island so probably a good decision that they were left off.
Finally there's a single outtake from Catfish Rising: Truck Stop Runner. A seaside-sounding acoustic song which doesn't fit the Catfish template at all. It's fun enough but you can tell why it was left off.
Overall, Nightcap is pretty great. Well worth it if you like either the A Passion Play/Warchild era of Tull, or the Broadsword era.
Roots to Branches (1995)
Probably the last hard left turn that Tull had in them, Roots To Branches and J-Tull Dot Com abandon the synthesisers, the blues and the hard rock (well, mostly). Instead they are very heavily influenced by world music. Of course, world music just means anything that isn't Western - so more specifically I'd call these two albums Indian folk with a Tull spin.
Of course, the first (title) track on Roots would have to somewhat buck that description. Roots To Branches, the song, is very riff heavy and includes a completely out of place blues breakdown. It's nowhere near the heaviness or quality of anything on Catfish, but it makes the album start with a bang.
Later on Dangerous Veils takes the 'heaviest song' crown, and is easily the least Indian-inspired song on the album. Maybe that's why it's my favourite one? There's some great flute playing and a proggy feel all around.
Bluesy songs come in the form of Wounded, Old And Treacherous and Another Harry's Bar. The former is much more fun, starting off slow and building up to a fantastic flute solo crescendo. The latter is much slower, and plods along a bit too long if you ask me.
The other 7 songs on the album can all be lumped together as Indian-folk-ish music. Rare And Precious Chain is the most brazen about its Eastern influences, sounding like a belly-dance soundtrack rip off.
I can't really pick out much else from this album. It just doesn't do it for me as a whole. Some of the more delicate songs like At Last, Forever and Stuck In The August Rain are good, but those types of songs were never what I liked about Tull.
Don't get me wrong, Roots is a good album and there are a lot of good songs on it. But it's also probably the Tull album with the highest proportion of songs that I never listen to.
J-Tull Dot Com (1999)
Yes, they named their last (not that they were to know) album of original material J-Tull Dot Com, which was actually their website domain for a while before they updated it to the full band name. J-Tull expands on Roots in many ways, the Indian and Eastern influences permeating through the entire album instead of just on most of it. However unlike Roots, the influence is (thankfully) much more subtle and as a result no song on its own sounds distinctly 'Eastern' other than Dot Com. These influences are then fed back in to the kind of songs that were written for Catfish, or that's my take on the sound anyway.
Spiral opens us with another heavy Barre, guitar riff loaded, song. It's followed by the most Eastern sounding song, Dot Com, due mostly to background vocals by British-Indian singer Namja Akhtar.
AWOL returns us to an A era, with very prominent keys and synths but still retaining some heavy guitars. Nothing @ All is one of the very few non-Anderson written songs - a very short instrumental written by keys player Andrew Giddings which acts as an intro to the following largely forgettable Wicked Windows.
Hunt By Numbers is next, with the heaviest guitar on the album, though the riff is repeated to death over its 4 minute-length. Hot Mango Flush is an odd song indeed, with Anderson speaking nonsense descriptions of a busy market (I think...) over a rhythmic beat. Almost rap... almost. The chorus is later reprised on the 1 minute long Mango Surprise for some reason.
El Niño is an Eastern-ey song which flows like the wind, much like its subject matter, broken up by rather heavy choruses.
Unfortunately, much like Roots, a great deal of J-Tull is rather forgettable. The entire last 5 songs on the 14-song length album I had to listen to all the way through just now to remind myself what they sounded like. They left no impression on me at all, and I've been listening to this album for 2 years!
Certain versions of the CD, like the one I own, has a bonus song at the end to promote Anderson's solo album The Secret Language Of Birds. It's quite a decent acoustic song, but doesn't fit in to the soundscape of J-Tull at all.
The Jethro Tull Christmas Album (2003)
What does a band do after 20 studio albums and 35 years? Well you might have noticed that Tull have written a Christmas song here and there, so why not go the whole hog? The Christmas Album consists of re-recordings of 6/7 previously released Tull Christmas (or, more generally, winter) songs, and 9/10 new ones.
The re-recorded songs are: A Christmas Song (1969 B-side and Living In The Past), Another Christmas Song (Rock Island), Jack Frost And The Hooded Crow (Broadsword outtake), Weathercock (Heavy Horses), Fire At Midnight (SftW) and Ring Out Solstice Bells (SftW). The song that could go either way is Bouree, as it is technically from Stand Up, but unlike the other 6 it has been tinkered and changed quite a lot.
What was the test I used for BÖC's Cult Classics (greatest hits but all rerecorded) album? Are these versions better, or different enough, to the originals to warrant listening to them instead of the original?
No.
Anderson's 2003 voice simply can't match his youthful pre-surgery voice. The album also turns the electric guitars right down and ditches the synth, which just doesn't feel right at all on songs like Ring Out Solstice Bells and Jack Frost.
The new originals are pretty good though. Birthday Card At Christmas is a great song about having a birthday on Christmas day (or near enough). Last Man At The Party is a very humorous song about the end of what sounds like an office Christmas party. First Snow On Brooklyn isn't my cup of tea but it does its job - making you picture and feel the snow hitting New York.
The remaining 5 songs on the album are each instrumentals, which is a lot for a Tull album. 4 of which are arrangements of classic Christmas hymns or carols, the other being an original composed by Barre.
I like this album, but it's a weak one. It works being brought out for a month or two a year, but doesn't warrant much further listening.
Post-2008 copies of this album will have an entire Tull Christmas concert included as well, playing mostly live versions of songs from the original album. As the concert was played as a kind of alternative Christmas service in a church, the songs are interrupted every so often with readings taken from a variety of Christmas-themed sources. Other than the novelty of Anderson's son-in-law Andrew Lincoln, of Walking Dead and Love Actually fame, doing a reading, they just get annoying on repeated listens. There are also some carols sung by choirs, which I could do without.
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So that's Tull. In all, I personally don't think they ended very well. Right up until Catfish Rising, I liked pretty much everything they put out. Even the weird electronic stuff in the 80s. It's a shame really, but would I have been happy if they'd just carried on in the Catfish mould for 3 more albums? Perhaps not. Tull are prog, and that's short for progressive. If they weren't trying new things and innovating they wouldn't be themselves.
Anderson continues to write and release music. He released a lyrical and musical sequel to Thick As A Brick (Thick As A Brick 2) which was simply fantastic all the way through. Then came Homo Erraticus, an equally proggy and ambitious venture which I love. And he's allegedly putting lips to flute once again this year for another solo album. If he keeps the quality up, then maybe it was for the best that Jethro Tull dissolved in the mid 2000s. I would like it if he brought Barre back in to the fold though...
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Updates
The Zealot Gene (2022)
Ian Anderson released The Zealot Gene in early 2022 under the Jethro Tull name. But is it a Jethro Tull album? Or is it an Ian Anderson album? Or even a Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson album? The lines are increasingly blurred. I was sceptical of the use of the band name, myself, though largely for sentimental reasons of Martin Barre not being involved. Having had it for a month now, I think it perhaps is appropriate. Largely because the music feels like a continuation of the direction that Tull were headed in on Roots to Branches and J-Tull Dot Com - it's less rocky, more 'world music'ey. As such, it's more clear now that Anderson's in between albums (TaaB2 and Homo Erraticus - see other blog post) don't quite fit the Jethro Tull artistic progression (though they sound more like 'classic' Tull, and for that reason I much prefer them to this new effort).
The Zealot Gene largely, though not exclusively, sees Anderson taking another look at religion. Many of the songs are biblically inspired, with those stories being used as allegories for modern day issues. Already that doesn't fill be with confidence; it is decidedly not the acerbic swipe from the Aqualung days. It also cannot go without mention that this may be Jethro Tull's worst album cover of all time. Though to be fair, it is representative: an old man and his words.
Right. Lets stop dancing around it. I am massively disappointed in this album. After the high highs of Taab2 and Homo Erraticus, this is not nearly in the same league. This is for many reasons, some of them to do with my personal preferences, others not. On the former, there is not much 'rock' going on in this prog rock record. The guitars are low in the mix, and rarely are they given time and space to take centre stage. This tracks with the last few Jethro Tull albums, but it still feels like the rug has been pulled after the rockier last 2 solo albums. Additionally, the lyrics largely don't work for me. Anderson has always been an intelligent lyricist, but rarely at the expense of crafting an appealing song. Homo Erraticus had a bit of this, but not nearly to the same extent. There really isn't much here that one wants to sing along to.
And there is the main issue, which really is two issues. Anderson simply cannot sing anymore. In Taab2 and Homo Erraticus, he (largely) got away with his increasingly weak and frail voice, helped in part by a back up vocalist. But he's alone here, and centre stage. And it's bad. Genuinely, cringingly bad. So bad I just don't want to listen to it - what was he thinking on Mine Is The Mountain?? A lot of the time, it's more talk-singing that straight singing, but this gives the songs a flat effect. What makes this even more of a shame is that the underlying music to some of the songs is really quite interesting. The flute riff in Mrs Tibbits is fun, the whistle in Sad City Sisters is enjoyable (it's no The Whistler, but close enough), The Betrayal of Joshua Kynde and The Fisherman of Ephesus have some good guitar. But in all of them, the vocals pull me out of any enjoyment.
The second issue is that... well, it's a little difficult to put into words. There aren't any tunes here. One almost wants to say there aren't any songs, merely poetry over music. But the real issue is the lack of melodies. As I said, Anderson largely speaks rather than sings the lyrics (when he tries to sing it all gets worse) which means there is very little emotion to these sings. There's no feeling. Actually, that's it - this is an unfeeling album. The single exception to this is the title track, The Zealot Gene, which is probably the album highlight. This was one of the earliest songs recorded for the album, and one wonders whether Anderson's voice was able to do this 2 years ago, but not so able later on when he had to record the rest.
I normally like pulling out individual songs when I do these posts, and talk about them. But, if I'm honest, large chunks of this album mesh together into an amorphous stream of music. Particularly the last 5 or so songs (and even more specifically: Were Did Saturday Go?, Three Loves Three, and In Brief Visitation) are difficult to distinguish unless you listen closely. Sure, the riffs and lyrics are different, but the vocal delivery is identical and the overall feel and tone of the songs are very similar.
I don't like not-liking this album. I don't like writing down why I don't like it. But this just disappointed me so much I had to get it out. Jethro Tull, and Anderson in general, remain one of my favourite artists of all time. But you can't like everything all of the time. What baffles me is the rave reviews that this album has got in large sections of the music press, a consequence I think of Anderson's status as a Godfather of Prog.
What would I like Anderson to do next? It's rather simple, actually. Hire a vocalist. Though I'm not a huge fan of much of the music, there are still some passages that are excellent. There's no shame in admitting your voice is past your prime. You don't have to take yourself out of the picture completely - sharing duties seems the ideal compromise. Otherwise, I will keep listening to Taab2 and Homo Erraticus.
RökFlöte (2023)
A full-on concept album, the suite it bookended by Voluspo and Ithavol, tracks which contain Icelandic spoken word recitals from the Poetic Edda, one of the primary sources for our understanding of the Norse myths. The first concerns a prophecy spoken to Odin about the oncoming end-of-days, the second the rebirth of the world post-Ragnarök. Though not identical, there are musical reprisals to note of between the two tracks. What do they sound like? Well there's some folky flute followed by some relatively hard rocking guitar chords. They're both fine but are ultimately not songs you'd listen to if you weren't in for the full concept experience. Worth noting that the rest of the songs tend to contain lyrics of the 'classic' myth stories, followed by a more modern interpretation (e.g. Trickster tells of Loki throwing paper at the back of a classroom).
Ginnungagap comes next, and is probably better than anything on The Zealot Gene. There's a melody, for a start. And there are some passages in 7/8. A prog song, by modern Jethro Tull! Shock horror. The follow up, Allfather, has this jolly, folky, poppy melody in the choruses which comes across as all wrong for a song about Odin. Not a fan. The Feathered Consort (i.e. Frigg) sounds like it could have come from Roots to Branches, it's very flute-heavy and world music-inspired.
Hammer on Hammer is a bit of a let down, for a song about Thor. You'd expect something a bit heavier. But in its 'modern update' section, it does bizarrely draw parallels between Thor and, er, Vladimir Putin whom Ian met in 1992. I wonder if it's meant to suggest Ian's flute is a metaphor for Jörmungandr? The next track is much more like it - Wolf Unchained i.e. (Fenrir) is an upbeat prog-rock song which has something of a Broadsword and the Beast feel about it. Possibly the best Jethro Tull song in 20 years (an easy feat given there's only three albums in that list...). Skipping the next song for a moment, Trickster (And the Mistletoe) is also good fun which switches genres a few times and has an oddly Christmassy feel in parts.
Going back, The Perfect One (i.e. Balder) is a slow and meandering song with a decent guitar solo. Then Cornucopia (i.e. Freya/Freyr) is a soft ballad which is fine. Amusingly the album liner notes point out that we don't actually know whether Frigg and Freya are the same person, but we get 2 songs for them anyway. The final two proper songs also take us back to safer prog-rock ground. The Navigators (i.e. Njord) is a relatively rocky song that sounds J-Tull.com-esque. Guardian's Watch (i.e. Heimdall) starts off with soft flute before going relatively slow/heavy for a classic Sabbath kind-of feel (notwithstanding Ian's voice).
Ian's voice has not improved since the last album. It's still very weak and struggles to hit anything resembling a high note. But at least this time he's trying to sing some melodies instead of just talking over the music. And it does feel like the standard of music has gone up. There is more variety here, and more rockiness. There are even hints of Jethro Tull from past eras (though primarily the 80s and 90s). One slightly odd thing is that the keyboards/synths here are unbelievably 80s-sounding. It's not bad, but it does jar the first few listens. I am also not a fan of the production. Every album Ian Anderson has written since the Christmas Album has had this airy, light production, as if everything has been recorded in a large empty room where the musicians are as far apart as possible. Even when the guitars go heavy, they sound distant and lack oomph. Presumably Ian prefers this, but it doesn't make for a very immediate sound.
So all in all a big improvement over the previous effort. It's still not fantastic album. There are a few peaks, but also a fair few troughs. An inconsistent experience for the Tull fan, but given Ian shows no signs of slowing down I suppose we can assume another album is on the horizon...
Curious Ruminant (2025
Here we are again. Not willing to take anything resembling a rest (never mind retirement...), Ian is back with a third Jethro Tull album. An album which has an ok, but still not fantastic, cover.
So, what's changed? Not much. Simplified, this album feels like The Zealot Gene but better. We've got 9 songs and, on average, the song lengths are a bit longer. We also have the longest Tull song since Minstrel! But this is still firmly in folk/'world music' land, he still can't sing, and the production still feels cold and empty. In its favour, the songs have a bit more to them this time, and like on the last album there is at least an attempt to sing/speak in melodies.
Puppet and The Puppet Master starts us off with some fast-paced 6/8 driven by a nice chuggy guitar rhythm, which is mainly just a base from which Anderson can flute about the place. The lyrics are a vaguely funny pun on how Anderson is both the audience's puppet, but is also the puppet master of the rest of the band. The latter fact is not lost on any Tull fans who are increasingly uneasy about his iron grip on the entire musical package.
The title track is a bit of a classic prog song. It shifts through a few movements and time signatures over its 6 minute length, and even has a decent guitar solo. This is genuinely a good listen. Over Jerusalem is also in this (almost) 6 minute classic prog style, but isn't quite as catchy, and the melody is a bit more strained. Still, it's nice that there's prog in this old goat yet!
There are two fun upbeat songs. The Tipu House sounds like it could have come from Homo Erraticus (it's got a Pax Britannica feel), and Stygian Hand has a Steeleye Span jig vibe. And then there are two downbeat songs. Dunsinane Hill is an entirely skippable plodding song, and Savannah of Paddington Green is a perfectly fine and inoffensive which sounds like an open green field looks.
Drink from the Same Well is 16:41, and as trailed is the longest Tull song in 40 years. It's a massive disappointment. The first 5 minutes is pure flute, and is apparently a piece of music that's been in Anderson's vault since the mid 00s. After 5 minutes the tune abruptly stops, and then a new melody starts and runs for 2:40, after which that also abruptly stops. Then the song actually starts properly. The song itself is then quite bland, and is still about 50% flute solos. So not really a 16:41 song, but more a long piece of instrumental flute music interspersed with the odd bit of spoken singing and piano. If you enjoyed Anderson's instrumental solo album 'Divinities: Twelve Dances with God', this might be for you. Otherwise, skip.
The album closes with Interim Sleep. This is odd. It's kind of like a Buddhist meditation helper. Snippets of guitar chords or flute bursts interspersed with spoken poetry. I kind of like it as a way to end an album (maybe a career?), but a full album of it would be awful.
So, concluding thoughts. It's more of the same really. The very best songs from these three albums are on RökFlöte, but Curious Ruminant is probably the most 'proggy' and - despite a few clangers - possibly the most consistently listenable. This won't win any new fans, and if you hated the previous two you'll hate this too. I am largely neutral towards them, and feel equally the same. There is more here to like than not like, but it's still a cold album that's difficult to really love.
I continue to hope that either Anderson stops or hires a singer. He can still write a good song, and he can still play the flute. But just please let someone else sing and write the melodies if you are to keep going. I'd also prefer an external producer, but that seems a wish too far for our Puppet Master.
