A PASSION PLAY

Jethro Tull were under enormous pressure when it came to cooking up the follow-up to Thick as a Brick, not least because early sessions aimed at producing a new album fell to pieces (but, thankfully, the highlights are available on the excellent Nightcap collection). In the end, they produced yet another album around the concept of one long song, and unfortunately this time around it feels rather forced - what was a good idea to do once as a joke seems to have been unsustainable as a model for continued releases.

In addition, this album has the infamous tale of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles, an incredibly irritating and - to me, at least - not very funny story which robs the album of all its momentum. Apparently it was usual in medieval passion plays to have a comical interlude between acts, so fair enough, Tull get points for accuracy. But they lose more points for cleaving to a vision of accuracy which ends up wrecking my enjoyment of the album.

It's by no means terrible, but there are severe structural and compositional issues with the album - there just don't seem to be as many ideas on display as on Thick as a Brick - and aside from the Hare it's a bit more po-faced than Tull's typical fare. For hardcore Tull fans only.