Jerk Music Critic: jethro tull

Stand up and pull their finger out is more like it. There are fun moments (the sludgy blues of "A New Day Yesterday," the Bach redo in "Bourrée") and deep moments ("Reasons for Waiting") and at least one heavy rocker ("We Used To Know," chiefly), but the Celtic affectations get old fast; much of the album are songs in perpetual neutral (the chronic rhythmic tease of "Back to the Family" comes to mind) while we wait for them to cut the crap and get to it. Even the snark in "Fat Man" can't save it from the noodles and molasses, and the album's generally tinny mix doesn't help. "It's not easy singing sad songs," warbles Ian Anderson, but he forgets it's not necessarily a good time listening to them either. The 2001 single-disc remaster improves this by including their two 1969 singles, the excellent "Living In The Past" and the superbly menacing "Sweet Dream" on the A-side, and while B-side "Driving Song" is perfunctory the other B-side "17" transcends its flat recording with actual rock and an actual beat. See, they can do it when they want to, so why didn't they on the album? The three-disc 2010 and 2016 releases largely just add extended live sets and are best left to the obsessed. (Content: no concerns.)

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If this were a prog rock concert, the high-quality production would be well worth the price of admission and I might even stay seated for the whole thing. But this is a take-home album, for goodness sake, and in the manner of a passive-aggressive orthodontist Ian Anderson is going to make you sit through all of it whether you want to or not. Only the limitations of the LP yielded the band's solitary concession to split it in half. As musings on life and childhood and art, the lyrics are creative enough (as is that famous tabloid gatefold); as a self-indulgent satire of the worst excesses of the concept album, the idea is certainly clever. But a good idea doesn't necessarily make 43 minutes of it worth continuously sitting through, even when the execution's solid. As proof, the 25th anniversary reissue includes a 1978 live performance ... that's less than twelve. (Content: mild adult themes.)

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Express Yourself

The Jerk Music Critic is a collection of amateur music reviews I wrote largely non-professionally between the 1990s and today. Some of these reviews are contemporary and some are retrospective, and a few are rather dated, but all are intended to be free-standing and permanent records of my completely worthless musical opinion. They are presented in no particular order and "new" reviews that occur may actually be simply prior ones I've only now transcribed. Older reviews have been edited to hopefully remove inaccuracies later revealed, as well as add brief content advisories (see "Smash the PMRC") and, where reissues exist with different tracks, brief commentaries on these later additions (the actual star review was not altered).

If you're looking for a specific artist, or just interested to see what I really liked (or really didn't), "When I Break Down" indexes reviews by artist and by number of stars awarded (see "Star Chart" for an explanation).

As we move deeper into the Internet music age where the album format might seem hopelessly antiquated, there is still some artistic value in the LP to those artists who still take advantage of it, and some of these recordings can only be properly appreciated in that context. I hope you enjoy these reviews and recommendations, and don't take them too seriously. — Cameron Kaiser

Star Chart

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An instant classic. Substantially advances/d the state of the art, either technologically, stylistically, or (preferentially) both, and is outstanding music besides. Buy it.

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A excellent album. Nearly every song is a gem; nearly every piece is a winner. Falls short of 5 stars for want of that certain special something, but the difference is in impact, not in musical quality. Buy it.

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Solid. Mostly good songs with a few clinkers. Salvageable with a good playlist. Buy it cheap.

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Mixed. Some good songs stand out, but not enough to make it listenable as a whole. Buy the good songs on iTunes.

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Bad. One or two tracks of even decent quality. Buy the good songs cheap on iTunes.

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How did this get released?

Smash the PMRC

I don't advocate for censorship or unnuanced black and white stickers, but I do advocate for parents being able to raise kids in the way they see fit, which might include introducing albums of controversial yet artistic merit at a point in their child's life when they can better appreciate it. The content summaries are intended to be a very general guide, reflective of only my own personal sensibilities and mine alone, and do not substitute in any way for a parent actually sitting down and listening to the album themselves. If you excessively rely on my content advisories, then I'm the one raising your kid, and you really don't want that.

Jerk Music Critic

Jethro Tull, Stand Up

Jethro Tull, Thick As A Brick