J-TULL DOT COM

Jonathan Noyce officially joined as Jethro Tull's bassist for their next album, 1999's J-Tull Dot Com. (Incidentally, this new lineup would become Jethro Tull's longest-lasting roster, enduring until 2007.) Stupid album title aside, Tull's twentieth (non-compilation) album is pretty enjoyable. It continues in the same vein as Roots to Branches in its combination of sorta-proggy hard rock and superficial "Eastern" influences.

The opening "Spiral" is a pretty decent hard rock song, but it establishes a recurrent issue on this album. There's almost nothing about it that stands out. It's an enjoyable four minutes, but once it's over, the song does nothing to stick in your memory. "AWOL", "Hunt by Numbers", and "Black Mamba" all suffer from this very issue.

"Hot Mango Flush" is a song that does stick out, however, primarily from its sheer weirdness. It has a jumpy, tropical feel, and Ian Anderson seems to be channeling Fred Schneider of the B-52s in his half-spoken vocal delivery.

The title track features the most overt Indian flavors on the album, enhanced through the heretofore-unheard-of use of a guest vocalist. Such influences pop up elsewhere on the album, including rather heavy-handedly on both "El Niño" (which also features Martin Barre's most metallic guitar riff ever in the chorus) and the aforementioned "Black Mamba".

Dot Com ends on its two strongest tracks. "The Dog-Ear Years" Sounds like it could have been on War Child, due to its overt folkiness and dashes of saxophone. "A Gift of Roses" is in a similar mold. It's less proggy in its structure and instrumentation. It's a pretty straightforward song, but the melody is strong, and the accordion was a smart addition. (The original CD release also contains the title track of Ian Anderson's then-forthcoming solo album The Secret Language of Birds as a hidden track after this song.) These two songs demonstrate that folky, proggy hard rock was Jethro Tull's strong suit.

Unlike a lot of previous Jethro Tull albums, I'm not sure there are any songs on this album I'd describe as "bad," per se. It's all enjoyable (even if the album is about ten minutes too long), but so little of it stands out in any significant way. It feels so ephemeral.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/07/25/deep-dive-jethro-tull/