HEAVY HORSES

The opener "And the Mouse Police Never Sleeps" tells you at a glance that we will be confrontated to a solid rock album. This short opener is just great : it is complex (even VDGG could have made this one). Rather unusual keyboard sounds, excellent but short fluting. The last fifteen seconds are quite awful, unfortunately.

"Acres Wild" has a medieval architecture combined with a strong, hard tendancy. This is the good side of this album (as far as I am concerned) : Tull is hard rocking anytime they can while on "Songs From The Wood" they were rather folking (but not only).

"No Lullaby" is just another great piece of music. It reminds me seriously of "Tea For One" from Led Zep (Presence, 1976). Have a try and listen to both tracks one after the other and you will be amazed. This song is complex, lenghty with lots of rythm changes. It is one of the highlight here and one of my fave.

Although "Moths" is rather folk, I like it quite a lot : the melody, the accoustic guitar, the flute play ... even the orchestra in the background (which has never been a favourite of mine - being with the Tull, Camel, Purple, Yes etc.). A great song.

"Journeyman" is a good rock tune. Not great but neither a filler. Just an average, transition track for better things to come.

"Rover" is another wonderful piece of Tull music. The whole band is peaking at a high and supports Ian in a great manner (marimba, bass, drumming) : a very pleasant Tull moment as we all like, I guess.

Another of the very few folk song (I do not complain) is "One Brown Mouse". Average (as you might have expected).

"Heavy Horses" is the second highlight. The longest track of the album delivers several atmospheres : great and strong intro, pastoral and folky just after it, then melodious and passionate. At this stage, one knows that he is listening to another Tull great song. The chorus is really superb. It gets harder here and there with violin à la Kansas during the second part. This is "my" Tull, man.

"Weathercock" is less inpired although it has good fluting in the second part as well as some medieval influence (it could have been featured on "Songs From The Wood"). So far no weak tracks (only three average ones). Oooops, it is already the last one !

Two bonus tracks which will not really improve the quality of the original; but hey : this is a very good effort. There are so many good to very good songs here that I can only rate it four stars.

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