This Was is the bands first release from 1968 on the Island label to immediate critical acclaim. The album features a stunning mixture of blues, jazz and rock, the features which raised it above the releases of many of Jethro Tull’s blues contemporaries was the quirky songs and amazing ... Read review
Advantages: Great First Release Disadvantages: Some Cover Songs
This Was is the bands first release from 1968 on the Island label to immediate critical acclaim. The album features a stunning mixture of blues, jazz and rock, the features which raised it above the releases of many of Jethro Tull’s blues contemporaries was the quirky songs and amazing breathy flute playing of Ian Anderson. The album features a cover version of jazz king Roland Kirks “Serenade To A Cuckoo”. “Cats Squirrel” ... more
This Was is the bands first release from 1968 on the Island label to immediate critical acclaim. The album features a stunning mixture of blues, jazz and rock, the features which raised it above the releases of many of Jethro Tull’s blues contemporaries was the quirky songs and amazing breathy flute playing of Ian Anderson. The album features a cover version of jazz king Roland Kirks “Serenade To A Cuckoo”. “Cats Squirrel” is an excellent Mick Abrahams guitar piece. Within weeks of the album being released Mick Abrahams left the group so the album is widely known as This Was Jethro Tull.
Advantages: Excellent Return To Roots Disadvantages: None
This is one of the best albums and my favourite yet with a return to the more complicated musical progressions of their heyday and numerous shifting sounds and themes even within a single song. The tracks “Rare and Precious Chain” and “Beside Myself” have a Asian-Indian feel to them. This album cracked the top twenty and was critically acclaimed. It has elements of George Harrisons Indian experimental pieces about it while still retaining the JethroTull feel of probably the Songs From The Wood. This is Tull turning full circle. ...
Advantages: Challenging but rewarding Disadvantages: Niche market where the niche may no longer exist
Call me perverse or call me stupid. This is not a review for a product which will bring the masses clamouring for more, but I think it deserves to be reviewed, if nothing else becuase most of the other JethroTull albums have got the treatment.
When this record was released JethroTull were rapidly acquiring a reputation for producing heavy (not Heavy) concept albums with little concession to the uninitiated. Well, this certainly dispelled none of these suspicions.
A practically solid wall of sound, ranging from jazzy beginnings to the plaintive, occasionally folkish, warblings of Mr. Anderson, accosts the listener whi is not safe until the needle lifts from the record - if he gets that far.
Somehow though the whole thing intrigues, at least it always intrigued me fromt the moment I opened the wrapping and saw the stark black ...
Advantages: Fantastic Return To Blues Disadvantages: None
This 1991 album marks a return to JethroTulls blues roots. It is a much simpler album in terms of arrangements and was written using a guitar and mandolin without a keyboard in sight. The ideas here were to use instruments which came from nature itself. Mixed amongst the songs were lengthy epics like “White Innocence” the light hearted “Like a Tall Thin Girl” and the strange “Thinking Round Corners” the vocals of which indicated that Anderson had gone temporarily mad for three minutes. This is a welcome return to the bands roots. ...
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