MINSTREL IN THE GALLERY

One of the most interesting albums of JETHRO TULL after "Thick as a brick" was definitely "Minstrel in the Gallery".

This was an album that took JETHRO TULL's music to an almost symphonic sound since they could perfectly mix the beautiful short acoustic melodies and the long hard rock songs in the vein of "Aqualung" with the nice touch of the chord quintet in the background giving this album a very unique touch; however, the atmosphere in this album feels kind of dry, even when it has very original songs with nice guitar riffs and the nice violins and stuff, there is a lack of enthusiasm in the recordings: it feels like the band was really tired of playing very intense and experimental long instrumental passages and now they only wanted to play very easy-playing songs with very predictable riffs and much less punching drums. The album is not amazing but it is not bad either.

Songs like "Minstrel in the gallery", "Cold wind to Valhalla" and "Black satin dancer" are more oriented to a hard rock style similar to the "Aqualung" style while "Requiem", "One white duck" and "Grace" are completely acoustic and very soft; the main act of the album is the 16 minutes suite "Baker Street Muse" that changes from acoustic to hard rock from time to time.

Ian ANDERSON left the saxophones behind and returned to the classic flute as his main instrument so that reminds a little to the days before "A passion play" while EVAN, BARRE, BARLOW, and HAMMOND kept playing the instruments that gave JETHRO TULL the rock essence of the band. "Cold wind to Valhalla" and "Baker Street Muse" are probably the most popular songs that came from this album.

Even when this album is not one of the best ones in JETHRO TULL's catalog, the band demonstrated once again how versatile they were and how their sound could change from one album to another without losing their well-known style.

SONG RATING: Minstrel in the gallery, 5 Cold wind to Valhalla, 4 Black satin dancer, 4 Requiem, 4 One white duck/Nothing at all, 4 Baker St. Muse, 5 Grace, 3

AVERAGE: 4.14

PERCENTAGE: 82.86

ALBUM RATING: 4 stars

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