UNDER WRAPS

I'm afraid I don't share the same urge as most reviewers, and most Tull fans in general apparently, to mercilessly assault this record. This is one of my favorite Tull albums, up there with "Minstrel." Yes, it has cheesy early '80s technology. But it was recorded in the early '80s. "Thick as a Brick" has cheesy early '70s technology. "Songs From the Wood" has cheesy 1670s technology. That's what Anderson does.

It's an interesting record. It does flag at the end; the last four cuts on the CD (the last two on the vinyl LP) are lesser. And in fact, "Under Wraps #2," while a nice interpretation of the title track, simply doesn't belong and should have been left off. I don't guess there was much else available to fill that slot, as the remaster doesn't have any bonus tracks, and I don't recall any other stuff from that era appearing anywhere else. The weakness of those final cuts ("Apogee" etc.) does suggest that Anderson and Vettese wrote exactly as much music as they needed to fill 40 minutes, perhaps because the technology was so slow and painful to use back then. It is not an album without flaws (but then, really only "Minstrel" is flawless).

But from that first unbelievably cheesy drum fill that opens "Lap of Luxury," through the silly spy novel conceits of "Later, That Same Evening" and the portrait of a lecherous astronomer in "Astronomy," to the additional silly spy novel conceits of "Nobody's Car," this is a charming, very enjoyable album. And under the wrap of the era's technology, the songs stand on their own. I realize it's a fool's dream, but I'd be one happy Tull fan if I were to see them (i.e., him) live and hear "European Legacy" and "Saboteur" instead of, for the 250 billionth time, "Aqualung" and "Locomotive Breath." (Granted, the "Locomotive Breath" Ian sans Tull did at the Beacon Theatre last year was intriguingly different, with its reworking in 5/4.)

That's my two cents. Great album; top five, probably top three in the Tull ouevre. You can either listen to your favorite "classic" Tull album 25 times in a row, to make up for the fact that Ian was uninterested in making the same album 25 times in a row (well, until 1989 anyway), or you can give the guy a break. I tend to indulge artists when they make moves like this, even when they don't work out, but by and large, this works out.