Jethro Tull - A Passion Play (Chrysalis)

I read somewhere recently, or maybe I heard, that Ian Anderson viewed this album as a sendup, kind of a joke for the concept album loving progsters. I know it’s supposed to be true for Thick as a Brick, but this one? Come on!! It’s the most adventurous record they ever made, it might be the best musically speaking, and there’s a healthy chunk of lyrical meat on the bones as well.

OK, so maybe the keyboard work doesn’t stack up to Moraz in Refugee or to the best moments from PFM or Gentle Giant, but I still like the slowing heartbeat synth in the intro, not to mention the high-frequency-enhanced reverb on the acoustic guitar accompanying the line “The silver chord lies on the ground.” If the vibrato machine on Anderson’s voice gets a bit tiresome after a while, the lyrics speak to a seriousness and contemplation missing from every album they’ve released since. While the God/devil flip-flop is nothing new, the insertion of the “Hare who Lost his Spectacles” story brings things back to earth again; its musical setting is downright irresistible, and I sure wish I’d done that orchestration!

I’m assuming that much of the Bags readership has heard this, so I needn’t address the multiple power inversions, often simultaneous, found in lines like “In that forsaken Paradise that calls itself Hell.” For those that haven’t heard this, only Igor Wakevitch and Frank Zappa bring “classical” music and rock closer together. This is an album that reels in derision and lip service in equal measure, and I think it deserves a few more serious listens. It even stands up to Seventh Wave for musical excellence—anybody remember them?

~ Marc Medwin