CURIOUS RUMINANT

Indie folk is pretty co?Wait no this is prog folk. Uhhh prog folk is also pretty cool too, especially Jethro Tull. I was a bit surprised they made a comeback in 2022, and remain even after. Though I will say the past two albums of The Zealot Gene and RökFlöte were pretty much just ok, but I was pleasantly surprised with this year's release of Curious Ruminant.

I think the main draw the album has in comparison to the decade's formers happens to be with how the album feels kind of like a classic Jethro Tull album, with a mix of a more modern prog style. You get quite a few flavors of that classic Jethro Tull spin, namely in aspects such as the folksy melodies of Stand Up, the progressiveness of Minstrel in the Gallery, and the harder rock edges that arose in Heavy Horses. I think it all ends up working in the band's favor quite a lot, and makes for some very enjoyable prog folk jams.

I also quite like Ian Anderson's vocals here. Sure he might've not aged his voice the most gracefully, and he certainly doesn't have the same grit and highs as his past, but the more calmer vocals does create a great contrast to the music, and ends up sounding quite good.

Though, there is certainly some age to be found here. While the album does pull quite a bit from the classic 60s-70s sound of Jethro Tull, I did notice sometimes the album will draw from the late 80s-90s sounds as well, and sometimes that can be a bit hit or miss for me. Now I don't mind the later Jethro Tull sounds before their hiatus, in fact I am quite a fan of Roots to Branches and a bit of a J-Tull Dot Com defender, but other times the album sounds a bit like Rock Island and Catfish Rising, which aren't necessarily BAD albums, but they aren't the best you'll get out of the good ol' Tull well.

Plus, the last two tracks on this album, while pretty good, feel a bit stark from the rest of the album to their discredit. I think Drink From the Same Well is a pretty good prog epic all things considered, but it sounds just a bit too different from the rest of the album, and in fact in comparison to all the other epics that Jethro Tull made it arguably is a pretty weak one with it scrapping nearly most of the harder edged rock elements in favor of more folk; a bit too much folk for Jethro Tull standards if you ask me. Obviously I wasn't expecting the next Thick As A Brick here, but I feel like it could've been a bit more, y'know?

Interim Sleep though is more just an alright track, and for a finale it works quite well, but there is still quite a level of contrast between it and the rest of the album, creating something that is a bit less than favorable for the album as a whole.

Curious Ruminant is a curious case of a band sticking to their guns and making just really good rock music. While it does have a few bumps here and there, overall Curious Ruminant is a fairly fun album that, if it was made in a much older landscape, could've become a Jethro Tull classic next to Songs From the Wood or A Passion Play.

Best tracks: Puppet and the Puppet Master, Curious Ruminant, Stygian Hand

Worst tracks: Drink From the Same Well, Interim Sleep

The latest release of Ian Anderson's Jethro Tull is the twenty-fourth studio album from the collective, titled 'Curious Ruminant', released in March of 2025 through Inside Out Music, compiled of nine new compositions recorded throughout the last fifteen years or so, and finally recorded as complete pieces making up the band's arguably the band's most introspective and philosophically-acute album, featuring the regular that currently goes under the Tull name, together with contributions from past members James Duncan (drums) and Andrew Giddings (keyboards, piano, accordion), having previously joined the band in the early 1990s. 'Curious Ruminant' zealously continues the band's contemporary style of forging a successful homage to their classic sound, this time with a much greater prevalence of folksy arrangements, aided by the heavy use of the flute and the accordion, which almost makes this album similar to the famed "prog-folk trilogy" of the late 70s.

From all three recent additions to the discography of Jethro Tull, this 2025 offering might as well be the most consistent and successful one, speaking of the overall impression left off by the album, the flow and the architecture of the work as well as the quality of the music and the engagement of the listener with the compositions. Beautifully complex and quirky, at times really folklore-ish and playful, this album has some truly solid numbers, which shall be a fine treat for dedicated fans, like the title track, 'Stygian Hand', 'Over Jerusalem', and the 17-minute-long epic 'Drink from the Same Well' (a piece necessarily evoking the grandiose 'Baker St. Muse' from 1975), containing some delightful instrumental sections in its first half. Yet going back to the age-old dispute of what is progressive nowadays, 'Curious Ruminant' probably hardly qualifies as such, since this album barely diverges from the musical musings already established on the two preceding releases. Nevertheless, this album will make Tull fans happy and while it is nothing groundbreaking, it is a good, well-curated and well-performed recording by a legendary classic band.