SONGS FROM THE WOOD

I really don't understand it. "Thick As A Brick" and "A Passion Play" were seminals albums for me when I was a teenager (when they came out - I'm old), and I own and listen to them today. I've seen Jethro Tull twice in concert and would gladly do so again. Ian Anderson is a fine lyricist whose concerns and attitude resonate strongly with me, and I love his voice and his tenor accoustic guitar playing. I even sent a fan letter to the JT Web site as an adult!

And I can't listen all the way through any of the songs on "Songs From The Wood" without yanking the CD off, sticking it back in its case, and hiding it back in the rack until another six months pass and I try it again.

This album is, literally, painful. All of the instruments sound like they are recorded directly on top of each other. The playing is busy, noodling, and pointless, and the songs seem to be written in one and two-minute chunks, none of which are introduced to each other. At times it sounds like they're trying to take the organic complexity of all 45 minutes of "A Passion Play" and compress it into a five minute song. Other times - many times - the songs, singing, and performance sound desperate. It's not the short song format - "Mistrel in the Gallery" is nearly as good as the other two I named. I think that something really has failed on this one.

To be fair, this CD is *so* painful that I'm wondering if the problem is that the production is particularly terrible. I know I heard some of these songs in concert and liked them - maybe they're just way too constricted in the studio. But this is still the one Jethro Tull album I cannot listen to