MINSTREL IN THE GALLERY

"I don't think they're gonna like this much.."

Anderson and Tull, largely because of their success with singles in their first 4 years or so, enjoyed a critical appreciation that other long-form progressive bands (seen at the time as "flabby") could only dream of. On the positive side it made Anderson's extraordinary musical muse shine boldly and won him many plaudits for the more "album" material on albums "Stand-up" through to "Aqualung". On the negative side however, it made Anderson too susceptable to critical appoval and as the records of his progressive co-horts started to stretch out, Anderson's attempts at side-long compositions came in for criticism. The reviews for "Passion Play" were so scathing at the time that he "retired" and packed up the band. He came back a year later with "War Child", a concilliatory work with a bouncy single and was restored to critical grace. But now he faced himself and said "fuck-em!" for the first time.

Minstrel in the Gallery recounts a marriage break-up. It's bleak emotional territory. It's also Jethro Tull's most mature and accomplished album. It's such an evocative package - heavy and atmospheric with driving masculine lines of thickness and many lighter themes that exemplify delight, particulalry in their settings of tempo and time. A very soulful play of "poisoned regret" and rising wit. To me this album encompasses a world of it's own, made easier to visualize by the album cover - placing the band in an unexalted grouping of background minstrels who only spectate on the revelry - and the back cover presenting the band as they are leaning against the rail of a balcony in an old wooden theatre. Anderson's sneer a companion to the words "I don't think they're gonna like this much". And so the album begins.

The title cut, starting so cutely in Tull's Elizabethan mode hawls itself into the present day with a stark distorted birth and finding a rocking groove and a re-statement. Immediately you are struck with 2 values that will remain undiminished for the rest of the album - Barriemore Barlow's exemplary drumming over rock-reluctant meter, and Anderson singing with a soul singer's anguish and pitch.

"Cold Wind to Valhalla" is another growth out of a more peppery acoustic beginning - another of the albums many pleasures - Anderson's acoustic playing - to a full band whomp with great guitar scoring of riffs and lines, and flute brimming with attitude. The playing throughout the album is of a high order and although Hammond-Hammond's bass playing is the most basic element within the sustained complexity - it is effective and perfectly matched with the drums. "Black Satin Dancer" is more the epic, although the arrangment is similar the composition is far more atmospheric, here there are spaces and the play of tension and release is more purposeful.

I don't want to write a song "roll-call", I imagine readers of this sight are at least familiar with the album - and those who have not heard it need to. All the same, it's hard not to appreciate the quality of the acoustic work. Both in the large meaty songs - "Baker Street Muse", and the shorter solo connecting pieces where the playing is so sprightly at times, and beautifully sonorous when matched with cello and strings. In all there is an off-the-floor organic quality to the album. Studio tricks aside you feel the band's method of rehearsing and playing it out with over-dubs given over for guitar, strings and vocals only. The use of strings on this album, and other orchestral instrumentation (glockenspeil) is very effective and enriching, and I can't think of a Tull album that balances these elements as well as they do here.

The poetry of Anderson's lines are more personal this time and less satirical then they were on "Aqualung", Thick as a Brick" and "Passion-Play". But as poetry - giving rise to different meanings - it shows greater craft. It's a vulnerable cathartic lyric that accompanies the wonderful "One White Duck/Nothing at All". Which brings me back to where I started - Anderson said "fuck-em".

"Baker St. Muse" after a selection of longish songs, gives the finger to the critics that damned his suite-writing. It is his last side- long epic and perhaps the most effective. So visual is the journey this time, so London. It's a strange fact that as Paris is immortalized in innumerable ballad and chanson - it was the proggers that best illuminated London with it's winding streets, sweet shops, pawn shops, pubs, and deisel smell. In the song these elements, common and beaten as they are, shine like diamonds. And for all the inherent problems sticking a suite of ideas together, Anderson proves his ability in his wit and lusty / caustic eye - even when the music flags ever so slightly. The sections are good in themselves for the most part, the arrangement swells and contracts carrying the composition to a good natured rollicking end, almost psuedo serious. Anderson's narrative at the end - where "he can't get out" underscores the emotional reality of the album however light-hearted it sounds.

I love it because it's an artistic product, differring from more contrived (and still widely regarded albums) and Tull's own later works (particulalry from "Storm Watch" on) where Anderson becomes more a craftsman - even a workman - than an artist. Minstrel bears up well after a multitude of listenings.

Share this JETHRO TULL review

Social review comments () BETA

---

---

Review related links

• Send comments to kuipe
• Report this review (#149762)
• Buy JETHRO TULL music online with PA partners
• Show all JETHRO TULL MP3/Stream
• Go to JETHRO TULL page for videos, full discography with ratings, reviews and much more
• Go to Minstrel in the Gallery page for more details, where to buy and ratings/reviews
• Search the Forum for JETHRO TULL related discussions