HEAVY HORSES

The rural world that Jethro Tull portrayed in "Songs From the Wood", has its continuation in "Heavy Horses" (1978), their eleventh album. Ian Anderson and his bandmates once again make use of folk and medieval reminiscences as a sonic backbone and add orchestral arrangements to develop a proposal that is thematically inspired by the animals and insects of the countryside, and reflects sombrely on the uncontrollable advance of city urbanisation.

Already from the restless and anxious ".... And The Mouse Police Never Sleeps", with the brief initial snorting of horses and references to the cats waiting to hunt down the food-snatching mice, the acoustic frameworks take over on "Heavy Horses", with acoustic guitar strumming and Anderson's unmistakable flutes, and the rhythmic support of the duo John Glascock and Barriemore Barlow on bass and percussion respectively, as in the medieval and entertaining "Acres Wild" supported by the delicate violin of guest Darryl Way and the mournful references to a country past that is no more, the moth-eaten and beautiful "Moths" with Dee Palmer's orchestration, or the crystalline luminosity of "One Brown Mouse".

But the album is also committed to instrumentally more complex pieces, such as the rocking and disturbing "No Lubally" and the guitar riffs of Martin Barre, or the sad description of the Funky-scented city routine marked by Glascock's intense bass in "Journeyman" and, above all, the farmer's heartfelt homage to the hard-working horses and their lesser relevance in the face of the industrialisation of the countryside and urban advance in "Heavy Horses", a very progressive folk construction of comings and goings in which Barre's guitar opening, Anderson's melancholic singing over a delicate piano carpet, Palmer's orchestral arrangements and Way's melodious violin stand out, surely the best track on the album, and a stepping stone before the very folky "Weathercock", which honours the rustic iron guardian of the winds, brings the work to a close.

Aseptic to the scourges of the punk explosion of those years, Jethro Tull stayed firmly on the path traced by their multifaceted leader, and "Heavy Horses" is a stupendous example of this.

4/4.5 stars