PULL THAT THUMB (OFF THE TOP OF YOUR HEAD) (EP)

English, green, and very pleasant indeed

In 1989, the year before the release of their first full-length studio album Sting In The Tale, Red Jasper released this EP featuring three tracks. When Sting In The Tale was finally re-released on CD in 2012, these three tracks were appropriately all added on as bonus tracks. The first two tracks, Pull That Thumb (Off The Top Of Your Head) and Flagpole, fit right in with the eclectic and somewhat erratic material that ended up on Sting In The Tale. As such, they have little to do with the greatness that the band would reach on later studio albums. The nine and a half minute plus England's Green & Pleasant Land?, on the other hand, is a superb piece of Red Jasper, clearly pointing towards the unique and distinctive sound the band would go on to perfect on subsequent albums such as A Midsummer Night's Dream and A Winter's Tale. This little epic was a very nice surprise for me! Had this track been on the original version of Sting In The Tale that would have constituted a major improvement, easily outshining even the best tracks from that album.

As I pointed out in my review of Sting In The Tale, the band had yet to find their own musical identity at this point in time. But England's Green & Pleasant Land? proves that they already before the release of that album had it in them to create progressive Folk Rock of the highest quality. Some of the band's trademark elements were already present here, most notably the very distinctive and brilliant lead vocals of Davey Dodds, as well as the sublime mandolins and whistles.

Something of a lost gem this; it is absolutely worth it getting the remastered CD-version of Sting In The Tale for this track alone!

Though Red Jasper did put out a long EP (or short demo album) before this, the Pull That Thumb EP is the earliest material of theirs that is easily available, offered as bonus tracks on the reissue of their debut album (Sting In the Tale) on Angel Air. The title track comes across as a punkish affair, with Pat D'Arcy's saxophone providing an interesting twist and Davey Dodds' vocals showing a certain influence from Fish. Given the strident political subject matter of the lyrics and the prog sensibilities of the band, it's highly tempting to see this as a sort of faster, punkier take on Marillion's Market Square Heroes. A similar approach is taken on Flagpole, which if anything is even punkier with only a tin whistle solo from Dodds showing their folkier side.

The B-side, though, is the 9 and a half minute England's Green and Pleasant Land? - that having been the title of the EP/demo album which preceded this, but this track didn't appear on there. As you might expect from the running time, it's an opportunity for the band to let their progressive side out, with whistle and mandolin from Dodds dialling up the folk influences on a long intro, whilst the main body of the song has Tony Heath offering a spooky keyboard backing as the tone shifts to something reminiscent of Grendel or Script-era Marillion.

One of the more common ways I've seen people describe Red Jasper's sound is "Jethro Tull meet Marillion", and tracks like this really justify that, since it's pretty clear that the sound of early Marillion was a big influence on Red Jasper and, like Tull did with 1970s classic rock, they keep finding inventive ways of working folk influences and instrumentation into the mix. At the same time, there really aren't many neo-prog groups out there who were able to replicate the mixture of political outrage and melancholic eerieness which characterised Marillion in the Market Square Heroes/Script For A Jester's Tear period, but Red Jasper manage it adeptly with that closing track here, which suggests that what is going on here is not mere rote cloning but a homage which shows a deeper understanding of what made Marillion's music from that period tick.

Red Jasper would go on to put out a string of albums after this, but feel like they were overlooked both by the mainstream and by much of the prog scene, perhaps having the ill fortune to have thrived in that awkward window just after the neo-prog craze died down but before the internet prog scene became a juggernaut. Yet on the strength of this initial EP it's clear that there was something special here, and giving these tracks a try has certainly got me looking forward to exploring the rest of their discography.