CURIOUS RUMINANT

The latest release of Ian Anderson's Jethro Tull is the twenty-fourth studio album from the collective, titled 'Curious Ruminant', released in March of 2025 through Inside Out Music, compiled of nine new compositions recorded throughout the last fifteen years or so, and finally recorded as complete pieces making up the band's arguably the band's most introspective and philosophically-acute album, featuring the regular that currently goes under the Tull name, together with contributions from past members James Duncan (drums) and Andrew Giddings (keyboards, piano, accordion), having previously joined the band in the early 1990s. 'Curious Ruminant' zealously continues the band's contemporary style of forging a successful homage to their classic sound, this time with a much greater prevalence of folksy arrangements, aided by the heavy use of the flute and the accordion, which almost makes this album similar to the famed "prog-folk trilogy" of the late 70s.

From all three recent additions to the discography of Jethro Tull, this 2025 offering might as well be the most consistent and successful one, speaking of the overall impression left off by the album, the flow and the architecture of the work as well as the quality of the music and the engagement of the listener with the compositions. Beautifully complex and quirky, at times really folklore-ish and playful, this album has some truly solid numbers, which shall be a fine treat for dedicated fans, like the title track, 'Stygian Hand', 'Over Jerusalem', and the 17-minute-long epic 'Drink from the Same Well' (a piece necessarily evoking the grandiose 'Baker St. Muse' from 1975), containing some delightful instrumental sections in its first half. Yet going back to the age-old dispute of what is progressive nowadays, 'Curious Ruminant' probably hardly qualifies as such, since this album barely diverges from the musical musings already established on the two preceding releases. Nevertheless, this album will make Tull fans happy and while it is nothing groundbreaking, it is a good, well-curated and well-performed recording by a legendary classic band.

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