WAR CHILD

If I remember correctly, this was the first ever Jethro Tull album I heard, when I was 15 and I borrowed it from a school friend. I remember I dind´t think it was all that good and kind of forgotten about it. After all I had so many other better JT albums to pick up, this one was not a big deal. Or so I thought. Some 25 years after that War Child was one of the first JT CDs I bought when the new remastered versions became avalable. I was curious if it made any difference after all these years and after hearing so many other works of Ian Anderson & co (including seeing them live in my hometown in 1988).

Well, I think this is a good album. Not excellent. It was clear that the band (Anderson in particular) was intimidated by the critics onslaught on their previous A Passion Play and decided, consciously, to write an album in the more ´normal´ format of several short songs instead of the long one suite of Passion Play and Thick As A Brick. Which sounded like something not really natural for them to do. The two former CDs are JT´s best and going back to the times of Benefit was not - in my vision - the best choice for a band that was always surpassing themselves with every release. But it was not a disaster either.

There are many good songs on War Child that I enjoy a lot: Back Door Angels (a very good hard rock number that reminds me of their best CD Thick As A Brick), the delightful single Bungle In A Jungle is a highlight and should have been a greater chart success than it was then, Skating Away and the funny Sealion are also first rate JT stuff. Queen and Country was nice too. But the album is clearly uneven. Some tracks annoying sounding like fillers. And there are some leftovers that should be on the original album like Glory Row, Paradise Steakhouse and - specially - Rainbow Blues. Fortunatly all 3 are now included on the CD remastered version as bonus tracks, along with four more (two of them orchestrated pieces for a movie that never was). The band´s perfomance is top notch, as it was Robert Palmer´s string arrangements and the production.

After all this time I came to the conclusion that War Child has its meritis, but it´s also a letdown when you think it came just after such masterpieces like A Passion Play, Thick As A Brick and Aqualung. So if you´re new to this great band, be sure to get all their classic stuff before tackling this one. Good, ok, but far from essential. 3 stars.