WAR CHILD

"War Child" was the unfortunate album that had to follow up what many would consider JT's most creative moment, with "Aqualung", "Thick as a Brick", and "A Passion Play", the last two being album-long suites. When "A Passion Play" got wrecked by the critics, Ian Anderson announced that the band was done. But 2 weeks later, JT was recording again. Following such excellent albums, this album would be panned by critics and fans alike. But, in reality, it is not as bad as everyone would make you believe.

The band was planning on releasing a double album and film to accompany this album originally, but that project got scrapped because of music and movie business politics. It makes me wonder what we would have ended up if things were able to continue as planned by the actual artists. Many of the tracks that were planned for the film are now available on remastered versions of the album. Before these were available however, the album we ended up with is this one, and it is, in my opinion, an excellent progressive album. Yes it carries the excellent classics "Bungle in the Jungle" and "Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day". But it also has the hard prog of songs like "War Child" and "Queen and Country", the playfulness of "Sealion", and the acoustic flavor of "Only Solitaire" and "The Third Hurrah". It is loaded with tricky rhythms, it has plenty of amazing instrumentals, and it never, in my opinion, gets boring. Yes, it is true it doesn't live up to the bar set by the previous albums, but if you give it a good chance, the songs stick with you just like they did on previous releases. It also may not have the excellent prog folkishness of "Songs of the Wood", "MInstral in the Gallery" and "Heavy Horses" either, as it is more prog rock oriented, but that Baroque- ish feel is still there, and there is not doubt what band this is. And it is definitely better that "A" and a few others. The band definitely did not go from masterpieces to just "Good" back to masterpieces either. This is still an excellent album in my opinion and it has all the prog traits that we love.