A PASSION PLAY

A Passion Play by Jethro Tull was the much anticipated follow up to highly acclaimed Thick as A Brick. While certainly exceeding the latter for more sophisticated and complex music it doesn't reach some of the more emotional highs or memorable passages of its predecessors. Certainly in the second part the band reaches the level of Thick as Brick but the moment is too short and may have served better as a series of shorter songs than this one long piece of music. For one I could do without the reprised chorus of along the Fulham road repeated so many times.

That being said there is a level of music here that goes beyond Tull's usual blues and folk base and even conjures up memories of Van Der Graff Generator and Gentle Giant. It is probably the most experimental Ian ever went and Anderson was severely beaten up for it in the press. That must have had some effect on him as you can tell by the next two albums which brought back shorter and simpler but still good formats.

Still there is a lot to like here. The band is in good form and the music for the most part is stellar. Surely more dark than and not as uplifting as TAAB and more mysterious than Aqualung it still has ways of grabbing you when you least expect it. It is sad that Ian has turned his back on doing a medley of some of this material in his live sets because I think it would have been good to hear.

Without The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles narrated by Jeffrey Hammond- Hammond and replaced by another song this would be easily a 5 star album but I seriously cannot rate this as high as the last three albums in their catolog. The last of the progressive rock era of Tull as we knew it still rates 4 stars