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Jethro Tull - A Passion Play CD (album) cover

A PASSION PLAY

Jethro Tull

 

Prog Folk

4.05 | 1657 ratings

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Sean Trane
Special Collaborator
Prog Folk
2 stars 2.5 stars really!!

If this was not J T this might have been a good album but this is JT!! And it is completely over the top (as TFTO for Yes and BSS is for ELP) and it just went too far and finally came out as ridiculous. For this review, I kind of forced myself to re-enter it by spinning about 8 or 9 times in the last few days, five times with headphones. BTW, I have the Wilson remix - and unfortunately it doesn't have the lyrics (which might've helped a bit). Why the headphones you ask? Well, despite my best efforts, I couldn't concentrate on listening to the whole album (minus "The Hare" crap) throughout its entirety... I suppose this says something. It's not riveting me to anything at all.

But there are some brilliant musical passages, such as most of the faster-paced passages, whether instrumental or sung. Where it hurts is the constant step from Ian singing with just his acoustic guitar or with Evan's piano. The album's continuity is constantly broken by jumping from the acoustic/solo ground-floor to the electric/band floor... It's simply too much for me... TAAB of course did that floor-changing, but not nearly so frequently. As for Ian's sax playing, yeah, it's limited, as it pales in comparison to the flute parts (even the multi-layering of the flute is rather cool), but both are present, so it's not like one instrument is preponderant to the other (I read some critics dismissing APP as a "sax album"). What I do find a little annoying is that Evan uses here and there a synth to double or prolong Ian's sax parts... as fir the use (or abuse) of string arrangements.... Unlike the albums to come APP is not overloaded with them, and when there are some, they're justified. But the uneventful, boring and downright silly Hare piece (a failed attempt at creating a musical Monty Python IMHO) plus the rest of the album is a little too deconstructed and disjointed for me.

OK, I still don't understand anything about the concept, and TBH, I will not try as I don't care about it... If it didn't sink in upon the first few listen when I was still a teen, (I mean I understood TAAB upon first or second listen), it's not like it will sink in nowadays, though more mature - and not senile yet. I don't really think having the lyrics at my disposal would've made the concept any easier to grasp. But one has to give Anderson points for the daring adventure Ian & Co tried to experiment. The following project will abort because of the major criticism he got, courtesy of this album; and some of it was of course fully merited. As this is an extreme and controversial (love it to death or loathe it for life) album, it is very hard not to advise the Tull newbie to avoid this album, because they might just fall for it as well as hate it! Too bad for that bloody Hare interlude, which is responsible for the loss of at least one star

Sean Trane | 2/5 |

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