HEAVY HORSES

This album was considered the 2nd album in a trilogy of Folk Rock albums by Jethro Tull, the first being "Songs from the Wood" and the third "Stormwatch". In my own opinion, the first was the best of the three because of it's carefree feeling. This one is the 2nd best, and is very close to being as good as the first, but missing the mark just a little. This one was a little more rock oriented and heavier, but definitely not over the top in heaviness, not by a long way. There seems to be a little weakness in the album towards the middle with "Journeyman" and "Rover", but only because the songs towards the middle do not seem to stand out like the other tracks on the album. In fact, they start to sound a little too much the same as the tracks that come prior to them, but there is still a lot of quality in the songs. The album's only flaw is in the lack of variety.

Don't fear though, because this album contains several highlights and also more than a few career highlights among the tracks. I think the tracks "The Mouse Police Never Sleeps", "No Lullaby", "Moths", "One Brown Mouse", and especially "Heavy Horses" are some of the best songs from the band through it's long career. Because of the thickness of the songs here, it does take some time for some of the greatness to show through, but when it does, you can be sure that you will agree that there are some career highlights on this album. So there is definitely enough greatness on this album to merit adding it to your JT collection if you were wondering.

The album is definitely heavy on the folk and on progressiveness. There is plenty of both here. It is also both acoustic and electric guitar driven and the flute and keyboards are mostly on here as support. With all the great tracks on the album, there is also a share of minor songs which don't leave as strong of an impression and that leads to the feeling of weakness as you approach the songs in the middle of the album, but things do improve again towards the end.

With all the reviews done on this album, there really isn't much more to say. Not necessarily an essential album because nothing groundbreaking is on the album, but there are enough career greats on here to seriously consider owning the album. That makes it an excellent addition to your prog rock collection. 4 stars.