STAND UP

Following the departure of Mick Abrahams after the release of "This Was", Ian Anderson took over the artistic and musical direction of Jethro Tull on "Stand Up", their second album. The Scotsman's intentions to expand the band's musical horizons, without abandoning their bluesy vein, lead them into folkloric experimentations with medieval reminiscences, which, combined with rock elements underpinned by the recently incorporated guitarist Martin Barre and the unmistakable sonority of Anderson's flute, delineate the beginning of the path that Jethro Tull would follow from then on.

Stand Up" develops with a more tight-knit band, starting with their original bluesy approach on the opening "A New Day Yesterday" and Barre's punchy guitar riff, and on the rhythmic "Nothing is Easy". But unlike "This Was", folk begins to occupy a preponderant place in the British proposal, as in the brief and cheerful "Jeffrey Goes to Leicester Square" and Clive Bunker's bongos, or in the beautiful acoustic ballad "Look into the Sun" or in the arpeggiated melancholy of "Reasons for Waiting". There is also room for the energy of the incipient prog rock of "Back to the Family" and the stupendous solo with which Barre adorns the confessional "We Used to Know"; and even for the adaptation of baroque music in the luminous "Bourée", taken from the German classical composer Johann S. Bach's "Suite in E Minor for Lute" with a great bass solo by Glenn Cornick and converted over the years into a fundamental piece of the band's live performances.

The bluesy "For a Thousand Mothers", with Anderson displaying his enormous talent and particular histrionic flute playing, omnipresent as it is throughout the album, marks the closing of "Stand Up" as much as the opening of the band's definitive stage among the greats of the progressive genre.

A couple of details of the defining "Stand Up": it was number one for over a month in the British charts in 1969, and won the award for best cover design of the year, from the renowned New Musical Express (NME).

Very good

4 stars