Jethro Tull - Rock's Pied Piper

A Passion Play is the Jethro Tull progressive album, far more so than Thick As A Brick, because of the pathos that pervades it and the deep musicality that underpins it - a musicality that is studied, over-structured and full of nuance, yet still characteristic of Anderson's songwriting, never overly cerebral, with open, extroverted melodies that are never banal. For critics, especially the English ones, it's a tedious and pretentious record - claims that are partly true - while for many fans it's the summa of Tull's and their leader's musical craft; for this writer, it's their greatest masterpiece.

After this gem, the band would move away from progressive stylistic traits, at least in the strict sense of the term, and never really return to them.

The gestation of A Passion Play was as exhausting and draining as the tour that followed; Anderson was tired and constantly at odds with the press, and the results showed the following year with the underwhelming War Child, which returned to the song format with rather uninteresting results.

Many declared the band's artistic end when, in 1975, another masterpiece came out - perhaps their last, and this time an underrated one: Minstrel In The Gallery, an album dominated, at least in its second half, by acoustic passages counterpointed by strings in tracks of tremendous evocative power (the mini-suite "Baker Street Muse", "Requiem").

The following year saw the release of Too Old To Rock and Roll, Too Young To Die, one of the band's best-known records but also one of the most banal and slapdash. The album does, however, contain one of the group's most celebrated tracks, the epic title track, and sports a cover that would become Tull's iconography for years to come.

Much better, in any case, was the following Song From The Wood, which forcefully returned to a progressive hard-folk sound, with remarkable results in some tracks, like the title track or "Velvet Green", and somewhat tedious, mannered ones in others ("Cup Of Wonder"). The band's style veers in some tracks decisively towards electric folk, yet avoids the pitfalls of pastoralism thanks to the usual hard-rock streaks and instrumental eclecticism.

Along the same stylistic lines, though less effective, was the following Heavy Horses, while the excellent Stormwach from 1979 recovered a rockier dimension and closed out an era in the best possible way, with superb tracks like "Elegy", "The Flying Duchman" and "Dun Ringill".

In 1978 Tull sealed their fame with a famous concert at Madison Square Garden broadcast - for the first time ever - worldwide. In 1980 came the stylistic shift of A, which featured, for the first time, a measured use of electronics, in step with the times. The results, however, were disappointing, and in 1982, with Broadsword And The Beast, the band returned to their old ways with more than decent results. On that record, Peter John Vettese made his debut on keyboards, coming from a new wave band (RAF); but while his contribution to Broadsword was minimal, on the following album, Under Wraps - which he co-wrote many tracks for - he ran riot, upending the band's sound with the electronics of his keyboards in a bid for modernity. Pity the results were modest, making the record one of the least convincing of their entire output.

After letting Vettese go, the band returned to more fitting shores with Crest Of a Knave, an excellent record containing two tracks destined to become classics, "Budapest" and "Farm On A Freeway". The album also, curiously, won a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Album, despite not being a hard rock record at all - but in such matters, as we know, the judges are never exactly renowned for their competence.

The band's career continued with further albums, increasingly spaced out (Rock Island, Catfish Rising, Roots To Branches, up to the last one, Dot Com), always with decent results, even if the masterpieces of the past were now a distant memory. After a forgettable Christmas Album and an excellent reissue released in 2011 to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Aqualung (with new mixes by Steven Wilson), Ian Anderson shrewdly offered a sequel to his 1972 work, Thick As A Brick 2 (subtitled "Whatever Happened To Gerald Bostock?").

The previous chapter told the story of the child prodigy Gerald Bostock, a budding poet praised by the St. Cleve Chronicle newspaper (whose front page made up the album's cover). Now the Chronicle has become an online paper, and Anderson narrates a series of alternative futures for young Bostock, who might have become a priest or a soldier, a banker or a homeless man.

Every track here could be swapped out for any song from any album of Jethro Tull's golden era: the hard-rock riffs of "Swing It Far" and "Shunt And Shuffle" could have come straight off Benefit, and there are frequent progressive time changes and long flute-and-voice flourishes (like "Old School Song", whose title says it all) that are, after all, the house specialty.

The album lasts almost an hour and doesn't surprise for even a single second, and yet, listening to it absent-mindedly, you'll find yourself nodding your head along to the rhythm, dreaming of drinking mugs of beer in the mountains in the company of elves, and you'll risk getting choked up realizing that "What-ifs, Maybes And Might-have-beens" closes a circle, picking up not only the theme of the opening "From A Pebble Thrown", but also the historic guitar riff from the original "Thick As A Brick".

After almost 20 years, Jethro Tull returned with The Zealot Gene, and the first question that comes to mind is: are we looking at a new work by the historic band, or the latest release by its leader, who's using the famous name for reasons of a different nature? It's hard to give an answer, but we'll add, somewhat spitefully, that this record is also missing historic guitarist Martin Barre, companion to the Dunfermline minstrel since the days of Stand Up, Tull's second album, dating back to 1968. What strikes you from the very first listen is the Scotsman's different vocal register, which has changed over the years - perhaps partly due to a lung condition - but Anderson's sharp pen proves able to exploit that shift to make the compositions more dramatic and urgent.

The common thread is woven around biblical tales, used to reveal the ever-eternal human emotions, unchanged through the centuries: indeed, the record speaks of jealousy, hope, dissolution, arrogance, betrayal and sensuality, citing figures and episodes from the gospels - a device that's nothing new, but one that once again reveals Anderson's deep and passionate cultural vein, as well as his ability to make a rather thorny subject light, through the irony of his verses.

All the instrumental arsenal of the band's fifty-year career is on display: from bursts of stuttering flute doubled by the force of distorted guitar, to the characteristic acoustic passages sketched out by Anderson's arpeggios, enriched with accordion, mandolins, harmonica, pennywhistle, to the instrumental runs where complexity always serves the melody. From this point of view, this album can't disappoint.

The first parable is “Mrs. Tibbets”, inspired by the mother of the pilot of the Enola Gay, who dropped the first atomic bomb, in an alternating montage of everyday life imagery, biblical references and unawareness of the gravity of the act carried out, all wrapped in dark late-80s sonorities. Still in the same mood as the previous track is the epic title track “The Zealot Gene”. Amid fluttering keyboards and martial guitars, an invective against extremism and populism takes shape, against the will to be led by factions and ideological fanaticism, just like the Zealots (fierce defenders of the law and of Jewish independence), without seeing the nuances of thought and pouring fuel on the fire of division.

The evocative peak is “Mine Is The Mountain”, where an intense piano and an unusually deep vocal from Ian guide us through the encounter between Moses and an imperious, stern god during the handing down of the tablets of the law on Mount Sinai. It feels like a variation on “My God”, complete with an almost operatic falsetto declaiming the voice of the Almighty. During the instrumental digressions, the flute of the incomparable Ian towers above everything.

There's no shortage of prog flourishes, which find their most significant outlet in some sections of “The Betrayal Of Joshua Kynde”, but Ian doesn't forget to dust off his legendary little guitar, duly strummed on the triptych “Where Did Saturday Go?”, “Three Loves, Three” and “In Brief Visitation”: three delicate acoustic landscapes, a very well-judged crescendo, one of the best moments on the record. The story closes with the Ephesian fisherman, John the Evangelist, who even while devoting himself to fishing never gives up proselytizing. Stretching the point a little, it could be read as an autobiographical parallel with the life of the Tull leader, who after treading stages all over the world now finds himself shut away in the solitude of his country estate, composing during lockdown.

Despite some rather by-the-numbers distorted guitar and a few dated, institutional-sounding keyboard tones, The Zealot Gene should satisfy the band's devoted fans, even if it probably won't win over new ones – but then again, the eccentric multi-instrumentalist from Dunfermline has never operated by the rules of marketing strategists. In the meantime, he's already achieved one result: getting Jethro Tull back into the charts after so many years.

Buoyed by that success, Ian Anderson and co. followed up a year later with RökFlöte (2023), a sort of concept album revolving mainly around the characters, roles and principal deities of Norse paganism (in particular, the story of the Æsir). The title comes from “rock flute”, since the original idea was to make an album of largely instrumental flute music, but in the end Anderson was also drawn to the word ragnarök, with “rök” meaning fate, course or direction, so he changed “flute” to “flöte” to “keep the spelling”.

The sound stays on the same track as the previous album, between seductive dances like “The Trickster (And The Mistletoe)”, dreamlike settings straight out of some ancestral fable (“Guardian's Watch”) and softer ballads (“Cornucopia”), but often – starting with the single “Ginnungagap” – you get the impression it's essentially a singer-songwriter work by Anderson alone, with the band limited to the odd electric or orchestral touch (John O'Hara leaves his mark here). What remains intact, though, is the old leader's craft and class, as well as his skill on the instrument that made him famous, the flute, the true ruler of the record.

The prolific run of recent Tull output leads to yet another new studio album, Curious Ruminant (2025), the British band's twenty-fourth studio album. This time, flanking the leader are keyboardist Andrew Giddings and drummer James Duncan, Anderson's son, alongside David Goodier, John O'Hara, Scott Hammond and new guitarist Jack Clark.

Made up of nine tracks ranging in length from two and a half minutes to almost 17 minutes, the record confirms the singer-songwriter identity of Anderson's project in recent years, with him once again writing every track, his legendary transverse flute raging throughout.

After the gentle intro of the opener “Puppet And The Puppet Master”, a folk nursery rhyme chiselled by flute with seventies organ as a backdrop, a hefty injection of electric guitar drives the title track, which preceded the album as the lead single, pairing a solid rhythm section with the usual flourishes from piper Anderson, though without landing on a particularly striking melodic hook.

The imprint of the band's primal folk sound, decidedly more prominent here than in the prog path taken from the 70s onward, is reflected in the acoustic crescendo of the bucolic “Dunsinane Hill”, which combines accordion and flute with Anderson's warm delivery, decidedly more at ease in the studio than he now appears live, even if he still clings to simple vocal lines, all within a mid-to-low register.

This attempt at a return to roots is renewed in well-crafted folk-rock hybrids (“The Tipu House”, “Savannah Of Paddington Green”, “Stygian Hand”) that take refuge in introspection and a pastoral calm.

The sonic grandiosity of the rock band behind “Aqualung” and “Thick As A Brick” resurfaces only occasionally, among the sharp riffs of the tense “Over Jerusalem” and (above all) in the 17 minutes of the record's real tour de force, “Drink From The Same Well”, a shapeshifting suite – if truth be told, also a bit anonymous – which, after an elegiac flute intro, gives way to broad rhythmic and instrumental passages of typical Tull stamp, culminating in the entrance of Anderson's voice, unveiling yet another of his dark fables by evoking a “crowd of priestly spirits adrift on blood-red sands”.

Nothing innovative, of course, but it would also be absurd to expect that. In its artisanal simplicity, Curious Ruminant reminds us that Jethro Tull were (also) a great folk band, taking refuge in the acoustic atmospheres of those precious early works from the late 60s to early 70s, at the dawn of that prog era which Anderson and co. would later embrace with enthusiasm, becoming its undisputed protagonists. A wise choice, all things considered, so as not to end up like certain aging, somewhat pathetic rockers. Too old to rock 'n' roll: too young to die!

A band that has aged remarkably well, Jethro Tull never walked the thorny paths of the avant-garde nor claimed to channel generational themes, but always and only wanted to make music, and always wanted to be judged on that alone. Thanks to the extraordinary talent of Ian Anderson, a nonconformist and awkward personality, perhaps more craftsman than artist, they left behind a discography that is, overall, among the most significant in the history of rock, both in quantity and quality. A band whose expressive range was at times even limited, incapable of conjuring vast imaginative soundscapes or opening up grand perspectives, yet one that nonetheless built a body of work extraordinarily rich in invention and talent. Anderson's songs are often neither interesting nor revolutionary nor evocative. They are simply beautiful.

Contributions by Lorenzo Montefreddo (“The Zealot Gene”) and Claudio Fabretti (“RökFlöte”, “Curious Ruminant”)

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