The New Jethro Tull Appreciation Thread

Good godmother could be easily in the side A of WarChild, such a great track.

Took me a while to fully appreciate Warchild.Very similar to Too Old To Rock N Roll:Too Young To Die! Good albums,but not Tull at their very best!

Warchild is an odd step, but I think a key piece of Tull - it is a strong 2nd tier album (and i'd say only TAAB, Minstrel, Songs, Benefit, Stand Up are 1st tier).

I remember when the band changed their approach to composition. It all began with "Thick As A Brick" and then A Passion Play , War Child, and Minstrel In The Gallery. Aqualung was a transition into this new concept of writing, but also carried influences of the earlier albums like Benefit and Stand Up. This particular change in their music , I think to be their dark period. Some of the compositions cross into the complexity of Gentle Giant and Gryphon. The Chateau D'herouville sessions is from another planet and has an avant-garde approach theatrically. Some of the guidelines applied in the structure of the music..are typically experimental methods used when composing a dark theme/mini opera revolving around the subject of Satan.



 King Crimson utilized and developed the same process between 69' and 71'. When composing a dark theme...personal ideas of your own must be experimented with to transform into odd time signatures. Sometimes the notes arrive first and later it is decided if a quirky time signature can be applied. It's a long process because there are obviously several sections of the music...not yet created...but in the back of your mind and you should record your bits and piece what arrives to you later....with those small signature lines to form the epic or mini opera. This specific period of Jethro Tull was not exactly present on "Too Old To Rock N' Roll" and "Songs From The Wood". I mean....part of it was there and the other half of the end product was somewhere else. Songs From The Wood was very progressive , but the magic of composing something dark wasn't on the agenda like it used to be.




 "Stormwatch" was a return to a darker subject, but it contained a newer style that was evident on Songs From The Wood. From Thick As A Brick to Minstrel In The Gallery is their darkest period, their darkest work. The seriousness of the music and the sarcastic lyricism is from a dark world. It's just this one period of Jethro Tull's music in a box for people to observe. I've always been overwhelmed by this period of Jethro Tull.  

Edited by TODDLER - June 05 2015 at 12:05

Tom Ozric wrote: ^ I never found Tull to have composed 'dark' material (well, not in doomy sound and tritones etc.). Surely their 'coldest' is Stormwatch, but that has a dismal and very grey concept (and presentation) - and a song called Dark Ages

TODDLER wrote: Tom Ozric wrote: ^ I never found Tull to have composed 'dark' material (well, not in doomy sound and tritones etc.). Surely their 'coldest' is Stormwatch, but that has a dismal and very grey concept (and presentation) - and a song called Dark Ages Tritones are on A Passion Play. "Sealion" and "Black Satin Dancer" both contain more dark black dots than anything imaginable on Stormwatch. Passion Play contains sections which are similar to early Gentle Giant...but not doomy K.C. or Univers Zero.

Yep - I hear the tritones, I get the Gentle Giant complexities. I even notice the dancer on the cover with blood dripping from the side of her mouth, but I still never get the 'dark' with Tull. Not arguing the point, just my perception of 'dark' is usually dodgey (negative/sinister/bleak/doomy.....) sounding, and Tull don't sound dodgey to me.