"A" by Jethro Tull: A more natural follow up to Heavy Horses?

The vibe I get from these three albums is...

Songs From The Wood - Spring/Summer
Heavy Horses - Fall
Stormwatch - Winter

 

If you haven't listened to Roots to Branches in a long time, I would give it another go. For me, it's better than any Tull album from 1980-87. The CD is maybe a tad too long but most of the songs are great. Musically, it has more in common with late 70s Tull but with a distinctly Eastern vibe. I wouldn't call it a heavy handed blues rock album at all. You may be thinking of Catfish Rising.

 

RtB was the best thing they did since CoaK. My only complaint is that is has a type of samness in song rhythms but incredible melodies and killer playing like in the days of old.

 

Yeah, Roots To Branches was their most "progressive" album since the 70s I would think. Some great tunes and top notch playing. What holds it back for me is Ian's limited vocal range, which was really starting to become a challenge around the time of the albums release.

 

Coincidentally, I went to a Zoom workshop a few days ago with Steve Bailey and the jazz bassist Ron Carter where Carter mentioned how he planned out his albums and Bailey said that Ian Anderson had everything for the album worked out on a storyboard when Bailey recorded with Tull on that album.

 

Yup, sounds like Ian. Bailey is a monster btw.

 

Oh, I think the folk themes are very evident, even though this album has a harder edge. "Old Ghosts", "Flying Dutchman", "Dun Ringill", "Something's On the Move" and "Orion" all allude to folkloric or mythological motifs of seafaring (the Orion constellation has been used in nautical navigation for centuries), and the instrumentals "Warm Sporran" and "Elegy" are very traditional offerings.

 

Overall, I prefer 'A', but I think 'Stormwatch' fits better with the others. 'A' comes from a very different concept and has different personnel and even the engineering is significantly different.

It's a little odd that I prefer the more classic Tull sound, but 'A' just works perfectly for me.

 

Gotcha, particularly both on Dun Ringill.

 

tbh, as much as I like A I'm glad that Tull didn't stay on in that styke. Once was enough for me.

 

You're probably right. I'm likely to be thinking of one album rather than all three, I have them all packed away somewhere. I need to dust them down and give them another blast.

 

yeah Ian exorcised his inner snake charmer on RTB with heavy doses of Indian and Arabic scales and rhythms.

 

Catfish Rising (1991) is definitely their bluesiest album since This Was. But I wouldn't call their other 90s albums "heavy-handed blues rock." Roots to Branches (1995) has more exotic influences, bamboo flute, and a song with largely spoken lyrics. j-tull Dot Com (1999) is closer to Ian's latter-day solo material; it was, I recall, recorded around the same time as Secret Language of Birds. Only a few of the later 1990s songs come across as heavy or bluesy to me.

I agree Stormwatch isn't exceptionally folky, but it's often lumped in with SFTW and HH as a "folk trilogy." The past/present/future theme - which may or may not have had anything to do with what Ian actually intended - is mostly from the lyrical themes. (Although, even then, progressing from the medieval past to the dystopian future does move further away from pastoral folk music, so even there it kind of fits...?)

 

Yeah I'll go with kinda fits. Like forcing that wrong peice into a jigsaw puzzle. Lol. But someone in the music press lumped them together so that's that.

 

Nice to see someone else appreciate the TV Special at least as much as I!

Now, what about the orchestral War Child? I enjoy that more than the album proper, and that too allowed me to gain an appreciation for said album. Were it not for that, I don't know if I'd have ever enjoyed War Child!