AQUALUNG

"Do you still remember December's foggy freeze, when the ice that clings on to your beard was screaming agony?" Every time I listen to that tempo-switch frenetic acoustic line in the title song it just brings be back to 1994, when I first played this album at age 17, a total epiphany.

Aqualung is the 4th studio album by symphonic prog and classic hard rock legends Jethro Tull, most probably my favorite classic band of them all. It's pretty difficult and even unfair to come and review an album that's 50 plus years old, when so many many words have been said about it, but this album really changed a lot in my taste in music and placed the bar quite high. It is hard rocking, progressive, pastoral and folky, somehow symphonic at spots, a masterpiece that deserves a top shell place in anybody's music collection.

There are none real highlights here, at least for me, I adore and praise the whole 42 plus minutes and have since the first listen. Here we find a handful of classic songs and hits from the early stage of the band plus another handful of amazing deep cuts (if the adjective deep applies here anyhow) that show the immense variety and quality not only of Ian Anderson's songwriting ability (and how outstanding his flute playing had become in such a short time) but also what the other members of the band were allow to do and inject into the final product.

"Walked down by the bathing pond to try and catch some sun, saw at least a hundred schoolgirls sobbing into handkerchiefs as one, I don't believe they knew I was a schoolboy", I've always been a hardcore fan of Ian's lyrics, the tell so much and I'm such a perfect narrative way, simply memorable.

The guitar solos and riffs my Martin Barre are powerful and melodic making his presence mandatory in Tull's music, to me he represents the other face of the band, the less playful and more dramatic face, that face that tells you that the work must get done!

Jeffrey Hammond and Clive Bunker (his last album with the band) got along so well maintaining the wizard's craziness so into place and with the perfect flow, one of a pair! And the John Evan's jazzy, rocky, proggy and psychedelic piano and organ playing (and of course Mellotron!) balances everything rounding up to what for many would be the classic lineup for the band.

"When I was young and they packed me off to school and taught me how not to play the game, I didn't mind if they groomed me for success or if they said that I was just a fool. So I led there in the morning with their god tucked underneath my arm, their half-assed smiles and the book of rules". Masterpiece