HOMO ERRATICUS

Finally got my hands on the new IA record, and it is a pretty nice record, certainly an advance on TAAB2, but far from perfect. After several listens the album grows a lot on you, and the minor flaws it has diminish before your eyes (or ears), but do not kid yourself, they are there, ever present. I enjoyed the concept and the lyrics. I have read several critics to the album as a concept album, but I understand it as a very loose concept. It is there, it is explained quite well in the information provided with the record, but in the lyrics it is build in a loose way, each song weakly linked with the other, providing them all with a lot of individuality. Quite different from TAAB2 in that aspect, that album had a strong concept developed in a well defined pattern along the songs. HE is a concept album with songs weakly linked. It requires more imagination from the listener, and it does not bother me at all. Many people have also complained about similarities with old Tull songs, I see those similarities too, but not one was able to ruin the record for me. The squeezy thing (the accordion as is called by Ian Anderson) was very well placed in the songs, but it's sound does not please all ears. Overall, the band sounded more tight , more cohesive, but not all is flowers! I think Ryan o'Brien should have beem used a lot more. His voice is nice and added a lot to the songs he sang on. If not leading, he could have done a lot more backing vocals, strenghtening Ian's failing voice. But what bored me the most was Ian's way of singing. Few are the songs he sings following the melodic line, and with differente entonations. Most songs he sings as if he is declaiming the lyrics, just like the previous album. I don't know if he does it the save his voice, because the whole album will be sing in the stage, or if he really isn't able to sing in a more elaborate way anymore. Or maybe he just finds it pleasing that way. I find it to be boring. Four stars for this new IA effort, despite it's flaws, it's quite a pleasant listen, and leaves behind the antecipation for yet another and another albuns by the flute master of rock, ever improving with his new band, and giving us more and better music!

I have heard it numerous times and I was not disappointed with it overall. There are some aspects though, as there would be with any release, that I enjoyed more than others. I loved the flute parts but would have liked more lengthy instrumental passages within the songs. I would have liked the band to develop their parts more fully.. hopefully this may occur in a live setting. Many might disagree , but I think Florian Opahle does a fine job on the album. There is however no track in my view of the same quality as Change of Horses or the final parts of TAAB 2 , but overall Homo is an improvement on TAAB 2. This is a very positive release in its own rights . It is difficult to not compare it to other Anderson /Tull related albums, it's probably not the best, but its by no means the worst...... judged on its own merits , it is a good record.

Starts off with a bang but ends with a wimper. No doubt many will laud this album simply because it's prog. Ian Anderson is a great prog musician and songwriter but his concept albums after 1972's Thick As A Brick simply don't work. Concept albums, like great stories, require great conclusions. For example: a moral, an ironic twist, a revelation of some kind, a feeling of growth and transcendence, etc., whether conveyed by lyrics or music. Marillion found this out when they first came to the anti-climatic ending of Brave. (The song Made Again was hastily assembled and tacked on to the end of Brave in order to give the album a sense of closure. The result was less than stellar.)

TAAB worked because it was a lampoon of the concept album and, believe it or not, prog music with it's self indulgent grandstanding and it's deep impenetrable poetic lyrics (hence the Bostock character). Once Ian and Co. took this concept album business seriously, the result was the ill-fated A Passion Play album. The music on Homo Erraticus is actually pretty enjoyable, if vaguely familiar, because it doesn't sound contrived. However, if anyone can make pre-conceived early era Tull-like music sound spontaneous, it's Anderson. Unfortunately. the music starts off with a bang but runs out of steam pretty quicky too. As far as concepts go, a quick gallop through the ages doesn't work either (unless you're Billy Joel making a corny trite pop song.) I hope Ian Anderson sticks with prog in the future but goes back to albums with stand alone songs. If I remember correctly, Songs From The Wood, Roots To Branches and The Secret Language Of Birds were worth a listen or two, all featuring great stand alone songs.

IAN ANDERSON ended the band that leaded him to success, saying he could no longer renew it. But he could renew his solo career (not renewing at all). Even Martin Barre managed to renew itself, being now a guitarrist that rock hard in a more traditional style.

IAN ANDERSON is incapable of produce music of better quality comparing to Jethro Tull. And that should be a tremendous contradiction!

ANDERSON stop trying (as clearly he had in his early albums) to create a different persona from that already established in the career of his epic band. It turns out that if he does not divide the line between solo and his career in JT, we have no choice but to compare Ian Anderson with Jethro Tull - AND THIS SHOULD BE A TREMENDOUS CONTRADICTION. What is missing in this album is very simple: the melodies of Martin Barre and a drum set with the good and old percussion quality of Doane Perry. The rest of the music is Jethro Tull of the best quality, but incomplete.

Florian Opahle is a guitarrist that insist in soloing, the bass player is completely unremarkable and the drummer is only doing a too-simple job.

The concept is quite a fun, but besides that, nothing hold the album together for elevated flights. What is a pitty. This would be a 4,5 Jethro Tull album, otherwise.

I have been a huge fan of Ian Anderson/Jethro Tull for over 40 years (yes, I'm that old) so what I'm about to say feels a little like scolding your favorite child. Just my opinion, but Homo Erraticus seems more like a necessary vehicle to have a reason for a 2014 tour, rather than something created out of musical inspiration. Ian seems to have gotten a bit lazy and selfish. By "lazy" I mean he relies more on a formula for producing music. There's nothing new...nothing is "out of the box". The same instruments are used from album to album (I suppose orchestrations are too costly and can be covered by the cheesy synthesizer sounds). By "selfish" I refer to Ian's tight reign on his band mates (if you can even call them that). There is no room allowed for contribution or improvisation by the other players, so the record sounds very similar to recent efforts and almost as if it was generated by a computer program written by Ian. I'm not even sure you can call this work progressive. Is there even one moment where you are surprised by the music? Sorry, but this effort seems more like a business decision than a work of art. But I still love you Ian!

The 21st century music of Ian Anderson has been pleasantly good (The Secret Language of Birds, Rupi's Dance, Jethro Tull Christmas Album, etc.), surprisingly good (Thick as a Brick 2) and now, incredibly good (Homo Erraticus). Homo Erraticus is truly a great rock record and harkens back to Tull rock classics like War Child, Minstrel in the Gallery and Stormwatch. Rock, in a progressive way as only Ian Anderson can do it. Each track is fresh, the story he tells is compelling and challenging, and the replays reveal more and more each time.

Tracks that you think are merely pleasing build up into rocking composites of multiple instruments, time signature changes, thrilling vocals and twisted lyrics. Great flute, organ/piano, harmonies, solid bass lines and powerful drumming. A thrill ride through history, Homo Erraticus is light/dark/heavy/gentle. It is all there.

I was not too much enthusiast with this year offerings (2014) so far but my point of view has changed now with the arrival of this new album from Mr. Anderson paired with the new Gazpacho album, Demon. To be honest I did not fully appreciated Homo Erraticus at first. I felt it lacked complexity and it was too rough around the edges. After a few weeks my appreciation has changed though.

Homo Erraticus is an assortment of relatively short songs but this is a concept album so the history jumps throughout the different songs and the short length of most of the compositions is by no means an issue. Regarding its parent album, just don't expect Thick As A Brick because you will be disappointed. Only 'Tripudium Ad Bellum' has a strong link with the classic album. But we don't want a mash up of old songs, we want new melodies right?

So the rating is four stars and it is well deserved for this excellent recording. Let it grow on you and enjoy!

I have a theory about the breakup of Jethro Tull. Well, really the split of Ian Anderson and Martin Barre. Anyone who has seen Tull in concert in the past twenty years has been witness to the obvious decline in Anderson's vocal range. Face it, the guy has been belting out these songs for almost a half a century. And on top of that, the medical issues surrounding his voice have been no secret. Breaking with Barre allows Anderson an excuse to not have to perform the greatest hits of Tull every night, highlighting the fact that his 120 year old vocal chords just aren't the same. With this "new" band (most of whom have already toured with both Tull and Anderson), he is free to pick and choose which of the classic tracks, and even rearrange them for comfort, without having to defend the Jethro Tull legacy.

But speaking of legacy, just as his "Thick As A Brick 2" had that Tull sound, this new album fits like an old pair of shoes to the ears of a lifelong fan of the band. And yes, many of us are crazy enough to wear old shoes on our ears. Even without Barre, the songs have that Tull feel. There are classical based symphonic prog songs, medieval madrigal rock songs, british folk rock, and of course, some hard rockers (what the geezers at the Academy of Arts and Sciences might mistake for heavy metal).

Sure, Anderson has been famous for poking fun at the prog rock label, but here he has embraced the form for which he has been a master. The album is yet another concept album from the man that jokingly disdained the form. He uses his music to give his version of the history of man, from 7000 BCE to the year 2044. Lyrically witty throughout, the album is an absolute joy from start to finish (and the liner notes are a must-read).

The music harkens mostly to two of Anderson's strong compositional periods. The main styling, is the understated and elegant nineties sound of Roots To Branches (my favorite of the later Tull albums) and the folky, but complex Songs From The Wood / Heavy Horses period. Anderson intersperses classic sounding Tullish pieces with songs that use many of the sounds from the period for which they represent. Honestly, after many spins in my CD player, I still hear new facets of the songs every time I play it.

It makes me wish that Anderson could keep on recording for another hundred years. Who knows? Modern science might make that possible...

Flutes and medieval melodies can only get you so far. Ian Anderson, renowned for his work in Jethro Tull, has released a new solo work entitled "Homo Erraticus". That's quite an interesting title, as you can probably tell that his focus here is on revealing the inconsistencies and illogical nature of humanity. So far---so good, in my book. Yet, there is so much in this album that just screams "Mediocre".

Clocking in at around 51 minutes, "Homo Erraticus" seems to go on forever. You already know what the music sounds like: It sounds like Jethro Tull. Flutes and organs and I'm sure quite a bit of frolicking are all involved here. Anderson is wonderful on the flute, and there are certainly some great flute solos here and there. The rest of the band, in all honestly, barely exists. Oh, sure, there's the bass player (barely) and there's a drummer (beat keeper extraordinaire), but none of them really make any significant contribution. For the most part, this album is about Anderson and his flute.

Anderson's strange voice is on display, as well. The lyrics and vox are very folksy in nature, and they don't really require much skill or range. Indeed, this whole album sounds like I should be sitting at a Renaissance festival or something. I mean, I love that kind of stuff, but Anderson composes his music with such dullness sometimes that the added thrill of the medieval flair is lost.

As I said, flute solos won't always save you from mediocrity. "Homo Erraticus" is average in just about every way possible, besides flutes, obviously. The album is cheesy as hell, hippy, and just plain cringe-worthy sometimes. Every single song seems to follow the same structure, which is strange for a supposed "progressive" release. Heck, the songs barely have any structure, as they're mostly very short. Anyways, Anderson just loves to give us choruses that sound all the same wherein he says the title of the song very plainly and dully. Basically, every song follows some sort of boring pattern of a verse + chorus + flute solo combination. It gets pathetic after just a few songs.

There are some tracks I like. I like "The Turnpike Inn" quite a bit for what it is, and I like the opening track "Doggerland", too. The rest of the album blurs together unforgivably. The promising lyrical content, too, disappoints. It never gets any deeper than the skin, and ends up wandering off in rabbit trails that don't interest me.

Ian Anderson's newest solo effort is just another album in a line of disappointments and bores for me this year. The last couple months have been very lackluster in the prog world, and I'm hoping that something will pick up soon. If you like an hour's worth of the same flute solos and songs that all sound exactly the same, "Homo Erraticus" is for you. If not, don't buy it, and maybe Ian Anderson will just go away soon.

2.5 stars

"Homo Erraticus" is the triumphant return of prog legend Ian Anderson on the crest of a soundwave, based ambivalently on a concept segmented in three sections; Part 1: Chronicles, Part 2: Prophecies, and Part 3: Revelations. Following the bold "Thick As A Brick 2", that received mixed reactions, is no easy task, but Anderson has done so with admirable flair. The progger is now 66 years old but still sounds refreshing with his inimitable style, some may say too similar in style to Jethro Tull with his storytelling vocals. The flute is here; man, is the flute ever here! It is a constant presence and played brilliantly. Feast your ears on the mesmirising flute on the dark atmospheric 'Puer Ferox Adventus' and 'Tripudium Ad Bellum' that absolutely flourishes with quirky exuberance and dynamic flutters as only one- legged Anderson can perform. He is a masterful musician but his vocals still endear and he captures some beautiful emotive moments such as on 'After These Wars'. His voice is easy on the ears and relaxing these days, mainly straight forward rather than layered or with reverberations.

The album features some glorious Tull throwbacks such as on heavy handed killer opener 'Doggerland' and the divine showstopper 'The Turnpike Inn'. Martine Barre is a thing of the past nowadays but I still love the lead work by Florian Opahle such as on 'After These Wars'. The Hammond is given a workout by John O'Hara augmenting a 70s sound to the musicscapes as on 'New Blood, Old Veins'. There are some ironic moments such as on 'Heavy Metals' where there are folk acoustics and not a shred of distorted metal. 'Enter The Uninvited' has beautiful harmonics sounding similar to Sigur Ros' 'Staralfur' in the intro. The flute is lilting and the time sig is fractured, with some of Anderson's more aggressive vocals and an endearing melody follows on this definitive highlight. I like the clever lyrics referring to many familiar pop culture icons such as Burger King, GI Joe, Elvis hips, bubble gum, facebook, Apple Mac, Star Trek, Baywatch, Friends, West Wing and Walking Dead.

The album features some transition points with very short musical breaks like 'In For A Pound', but that works as a kind of evolving storyline. 'The Browning Of The Green' has a more distinct rock feel and some wonderful keyboard work over a riffing guitar distortion, and I love the flute and guitar break. The music is often laced with pompous medievalism, even lapsing into dialogues and off kilter effects such as with 'Per Errationes Ad Astra', but it captivates, growing on the ear with every listen. 'Cold Dead Reckoning' is one track that really stayed with me with its atmospheric melodies and pounding rhythms.

I found this latest Anderson release to be a very enjoyable album musically and conceptually. I admire the man for continuing to create the music he has become known for without compromise or remorse. Anderson does what he does and he does it well, so if you are a fan you need look no further as you know what to expect, flutes storytelling and catchy melodies; there are no surprises. This is a throwback to the Tull years and it is very welcome as far as this reviewer is concerned.

Bursting out!

Like the previous Thick As A Brick 2 (and unlike most other Ian Anderson solo albums) Homo Erraticus is a Jethro Tull album in all but name. While Thick As A Brick 2 was good and enjoyable, it did not overly impress me. In the light of this, I frankly wasn't expecting very much from this follow up. But I was wrong. Homo Erraticus overshadows its predecessor and indeed all of the other albums released under Ian's own name. This new album is easily the best that Ian has created since the 1990's and I would not hesitate to say that it is up to par with many a Jethro Tull album!

Another surprise is that Homo Erraticus has appeared so soon after Thick As A Brick 2, especially having in mind that the last proper (I'm not counting the Christmas album) Jethro Tull album was released fifteen years ago! I'm very happy to see that Ian Anderson is being prolific once again and that he manages to make albums of such a high quality as Homo Erraticus. There is here clear evidence of a new found inspiration and regained energy that I mistakenly thought he had lost (at least as a song writer and recording artist, he continued to be great live during the last decade). The band that Ian has chosen for himself is very good too and I don't really miss anybody. Working with these people seems to have invigorated him.

I must admit that this album didn't impress me on the first couple of listens, but it quickly grew on me over further listens. It has now had a constant presence in my headphones for some time and I don't seem to tire of it, but instead continue to discover new aspects of it. It certainly reveals itself to be a more complex piece of music than a quick glance at the track list might suggest. It is not really just a collection of 15 shorter songs, but rather a three-part concept album about the history of man! The lyrics are intricate and much more interesting than on Thick As A Brick 2.

Homo Erraticus is simultaneously Ian Anderson's best solo album and an excellent Jethro Tull album. Highly recommended!

I am so happy I listened to this album because I am so positively surprised by it. Often I have hard to really understand the meaning of many modern records. Even if they are prog ones. This record by Ian Anderson did though give me the lovely feeling of true music, and also music that sounds like the fantastic seventies. Another reason I like this record so mush is that it's folk rock, perhaps rather than folk prog, I genre close to me with groups as Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, Folk & Rackare and Folque.

Ian Anderson, born 1947, has been around singing and playing his excentric music since the late sixties has here made his sixth solo album. Its cover shows a big spiritual man walking towards us with a rod in a desert landscape. As we are used to know him Ian Anderson performs with his great mouth, singing and playing flute is a masterful way. His playing is folky and very professional and his singing is unique and very poetic. The lyrics are qualified, filled with impressions and thoughts from popular culture and features of today. Both texts and melodies follow in an order, a specific thematic way.

He also has a group of very talanted musicians with him: John O'Hara which plays accordion(a welcome ingredient), piano, keyboards and organ, Florian Opahle who perform his guitar art, David Goodier who palys bass, Scott Hammond who drums and the co-singer Ryan O'Donnell. You could say it sounds like Jethro Tull, but I don't know why, this is absolutely as good as Jethro Tull.

I also like every track on the record, and I already look forward to hear it again. "The Engineer" for example is a perfect example of folk rock, full of inspiration and ideas and the sacral "Meliora Sequamur" which has something of market in it are perfect such as "The Browning of the Green", very English and also a bit electronic. "Puer Ferox Adventus" is a lovely ballad with so much instrumental fashion and "Enter the Uninvited" serves us glimpses of our poupular culture in a cosy manner. Of course a early as on "Doggerland" I was cought. This tasts so good. Almost everything on this album is perfect and I think you will find your own favourites beside these I mentioned. This is one of many few modern records I actually love. I think it's so genuine and English and it is telling something to us. We are talking about a record of words, so read them and listen! Five stars!

No one can say Ian Anderson isn't ambitious. But the author of "Thick as a Brick" and "A Passion Play" may have chewed off more than he (or we) can swallow with his latest project: a three-part, fifteen-song chronicle of humankind in Britain, beginning nine millennia ago and charting a sporadic path to an uncertain near-future circa AD 2044. The epic scope would have challenged even the most determined Progressive Rocker, without even considering the concept behind the concept: an over-elaborate fictional back-story involving Anderson's old doppelgänger Gerald Bostock.

It's reassuring to see him embracing his inner-Progger so warmly, albeit almost to the point of suffocation. It can take longer to digest the contents of the CD booklet, with its copious lyrics and tongue-in-cheek essays, than to sit through the CD itself: a sure sign of thematic overkill. The music itself might almost have been an afterthought, all of it typically well-played and lavishly produced but hardly distinctive or even memorable, and like his recent "Brick" sequel entirely too lyric-driven, without a lot of melodic hooks to grab hold of.

On his web site it's referred to as a "Jethro Tull album (in all but name)": strictly sales talk for susceptible fans. It's true that Tull has always (or at least since 1969) been Anderson's vehicle, but at its best the band was also a genuine group, with distinctive personalities among the many players. What's missing here is the synergy of a true ensemble. The new quintet is certainly competent but, unlike classic Tull, completely anonymous, despite all the cosmetic similarities. Why hire young talent if the end result is only a watered-down facsimile of bygone days?

At the age of 67 Anderson isn't ready to settle into his dotage yet, and more power to him. But I wish the Tull CEO would stop resurrecting the Bostock persona, although I understand his intuitive reasoning: it's a link to his more creative (and far more relevent) musical youth. In the early 1970's Anderson was celebrating the virtues of Living in the Past, and it's nice to hear he hasn't completely changed his tune more than forty years later. Progressive Rock needs all the champions it can get these days, but perhaps it's time for him to leave the past alone and start looking forward again.

As Ian Anderson explained to Billboard in 2014, "To me, Jethro Tull is...the vast body of repertoire that's Jethro Tull, the record catalog, the music, and I think that, if we look back on it, it kind of came more or less to an end during the last 10 years or so (with) a couple of live albums and a studio album of Christmas material. That might define the last albums under the name Jethro Tull. It's a body of work I rather think is now kind of historical, since the weight of it lies back in the 70s and 80s in terms of volume. And I rather think it's nice to kind of leave that as legacy."

So Tull is dead, though it truly died as a band in the conventional sense in 1979, persisting thereafter in name only as a musical prosthetic for Anderson, impersonal and robotic. This album foreshadows the musical future for Anderson post-Tull.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a flute, stamping on a human face, forever.

Is liking this album a sign of my being an ageing Tull fan? Probably....

When Mr Ian Anderson of JETHRO TULL fame was presented the "Prog God" award in 2013 (proclaiming "Prog is Fun!") , fans of his colorful stage persona and unique musical talent already knew he had promised a "progressive folk metal" album for the next year. I think anyone could have predicted that reactions and reviews would run hot-and-cold, as they do for any new progressive music long past the era in which this kind of thing was fashionable, and anyway wasn't the controversial Rock Island the last overt attempt at folk-metal on Tull's part? But prog fans are as odd as they are fickle, and seeing this album appear in April of 2014, I gleefully scooped up a copy and immediately spun it the three or four times it took to really understand it, and really like it. (After all, hasn't this always been the way on that rocky roller coaster of Tull/Anderson fandom?)

It's an undeniable testament to Ian's enduring talent -- and spirit -- that he is still driven to produce this kind of multilayered, melodic, folksy rock music. I don't know if it is rightly "metal" however, nor does it seem a proper attempt at such; and, here again, the detractors of Crest Of A Knave (of whom I am not one) might say that's a good thing. No, if metal is meant to seriously kick your a** the way Tequila does on a wild friday night, Homo Erraticus is more of a fruity, late vintage wine enjoyed in moderation ... long about a relaxed and studious saturday evening.

And now how about a little something of the meat of this album, to go with that wine?

Mr Anderson hits us right off with a song in the best of Tull traditions, namely "Doggerland." It struck me immediately as one of the more likeable tunes, but with that caveat I must also say that the album gets better from there, once you have learned to appreciate it on Ian's terms. What he is actually doing is relating to us - musically - the history of Great Britain and, in a way too, a good portion of the rest of the world. With tunes such as "Heavy Metals" (referencing the blacksmith and his trade) and "Meliora Sequamur" (treating monastic and priestly endeavors), he applies the sort of light musical touch you might expect from his two solo albums just prior to TAAB2. And with" Puer Ferox Adventus" (the story of Christianity, more or less) and "The Turnpike Inn" (an ode to the kind of nightly respite, pleasant or otherwise, our species has historically found when travelling potentially dangerous territory), things get a bit roudy in the libretto -- with some amazing flute interludes to match. It certainly sounds, in places, a lot like the Tull of old times, although by now we've learned that Florian Opahle's lyrical electric guitar passages remain the singular opiate to soothe our longing for those spectacular, searing blues-metal solos Martin Barre was so keen on delivering.

Oh well, you can't have it all, can you? On that note I will say that this is more of a love letter from Ian, thanking his worshipping throngs of long-time devotees for voting him "Prog God", than anything that will win converts. As one of that cohort of Tull fanboys-of-old, I will also promise that Homo Erraticus has rewards for those who care to listen for them. How's that for treading the safe middle ground?

Back in the 70's I was introduced to the music of Jethro Tull and immediately realised I had found everything I had been looking for, and while my first introduction to them in concert may not have been exactly what I expected (it was the 'Under Wraps' tour after all), I could soon be found hunting for rare copies of vinyl and spending silly amounts of money on everything Tull. It was a direct result of this obsession which saw me being asked to write an article for the 'A New Day' fanzine nearly 40 years ago and in many ways, it has been downhill ever since. However, even though I saw them many times in the 80's and 90's it was obvious that Ian's voice was never the same after his problems in 1983, and when I saw them at Cropredy in 2004 I vowed to never see them again. By this time I was also wrapped up in the progressive underground and had lost interest in buying Tull when they released a new album, having been somewhat disappointed with 'Catfish Rising', and been further upset when Martin and Ian parted ways. Consequently I did not hear this 2014 album until recently, recorded during a period when Jethro Tull were no more and Ian was following his own path, although various of those involved were members of Tull when he started that off again (almost memories of 'A').

Ian's solo albums have always been a little hit and miss, with 'Walk Into Light' a fine example of how to ruin songs with arrangements which never worked: take "Fly By Night", which is absolute masterpiece, but only on David Palmer's 1985 'A Classic Case'. So to say I came into this album with more than a little trepidation is something of an understatement, so to come across an album which is the finest Jethro Tull release since 1987's 'Crest of a Knave' (for which they won a Grammy remember) was somewhat surprising. This has everything one expects from Tull, Ian is full mastery of every song, complex lyrics, bringing in folk and styles which sweep throughout the band's career, and never for once sounding if there are any issues. There may not be any Martin or Peggy, but Florian Opahle has a nice edge on guitar, becoming a member of Tull when Ian started using that name again in 2017, while bassist David Goodier had already been in Tull since 2007, as had keyboard player John O'Hara while drummer Scott Hammond had worked with Ian since 2010 and is also now a member of the reformed Tull. Singer Ryan O'Donnell does a very nice Anderson vocal style, and he had already been involved since 'TAAB2', so everyone involved knew what they were doing, and one feels this is very much a full band as opposed to a group of session musicians.

"The Engineer" could have come from either 'Songs From The Wood' or 'Heavy Horses' with its strong use of both accordion and piano and does not sound like a new song at all, while "The Pax Brittanica" is another which is classic Tull. I know the melody is from an old Tull song, but I can't for the life of me place it, but feels very familiar. It is an album which stunned me the very first time I played it, and I have fallen deeply in love with it ever since, and I have been revisiting many of their older albums to see just where I think it fits in their canon, and for sheer listening pleasure it is very close indeed to 'Knave' and one which everyone who thought their best days were long behind them need to discover for themselves.