A

I remember hearing this masterpiece for the first time, and the only two tracks I could remember in the days after were Fylingdale Flyer and Black Sunday, the rest of the album did not make a greater impact on the first two or three listenings and I was thinking at time "hmmm...ok, this was strange experiment with the unknown territories, bring me the JT classics now." But as it's always the case, quality is surely finding it's way to the ears, so in the following months I noticed that I keep coming for the dose of A on a regular daily basis.

There is something very special in the way this album is produced and played (my only notice is that in Uniform bass line should have been mixed a little bit lower, and in Crossfire those funny synths blops during chorus are completely useless, but there is no perfect album anyway...), musical and technical variety heard on this work are in my simple opinion, the best pieces of music ever recorded in 1980's.

This album had a great luck in the very unlucky situation, and that is the fact that after the disastrous decision of mr. Anderson to fire the best musicians he could be with in the 70's under the Jethro Tull hat, he again somehow managed to find best of the best, especially naming Eddie Jobson and his maestrous "additional material" paired together with his marvelous musicianship skills that can be heard trought all of the album. The truth is that without Eddie in place of both David Palmer and John Evans, as well as Mark Craney on drums, this would be a true disaster on the same level as mr. Andersons true solo album - Walk into the Light and reprise of disaster heard on Under Wraps, thankfully that was not meant to happen in 1980.

Martins signature Electric Guitars (the true reason I started listening Jethro Tull) are really shining trought the whole of the record with spot on correspondance with the mood and themes in songs, while mr. Anderson's voice really hammers everything written for this ocasion. Sadly, it was the last time in his carrier that we have heard real mr. Anderson and his mighty voice on any album, he thankfully still sounds very good on the Broadsword, but it's already a two or three steps below the quality heard on A and all other previous JT records. As I said earlier, Eddie Jobson altought featured just like a guest musician here, had almost impossible task of providing the true replacement for both David Palmer and John Evans. In reality, there is no true replacement for those two, but he actually DID IT on a much different scale, giving the new energy and sound to the Jethro Tull of 1980's (violins are nailing it down a big time!), while Mark Craney on drums maybe - just maybe, did the best ever job on any Jethro Tull album, an also almost impossible task besides maestral legacy of Barriemore Barlow - techniques on The Pine Marten's Jig, Protect and Survice, Black Sunday and Uniform are just madly perfect. The strange link is surely Dave Pegg which I'm sure did the best he could, but with a huge gap between John Glascock and especially Jefrey Hammond Hammond who was in my opinion the best bass player.

This album surely needs time to really get into the ears, but as the time goes on I consider it to be one of the best Jethro Tull efforts up to date.

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