After three albums with their roots firmly planted in folk, Ian
\nAnderson had branched out to a more electronic sound on
\nA<\/i>, the disc which was supposed to be his solo debut but
\nended up being the next Jethro Tull record. I swear, I must be the
\nonly person on the face of the earth who liked this record.<\/p>\n
Anderson had to have thought that a synthesizer-driven sound was
\nthe next route to go.
\nBroadsword And The Beast<\/i>, the 1982 release from Jethro Tull,
\nmostly eschewed the folk sound the group had recently been known
\nfor and featured, thanks to Peter-John Vettesse, a sound more
\nreliant on synthesizers than guitar. This, it turned out, was a bad
\nmove, and Jethro Tull had created their worst disc since the
\nabominable
\nA Passion Play<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Granted, the fault isn’t totally with the reliance on
\nsynthesizers — that would become a problem on
\nUnder Wraps<\/i>, but that was one album away. Yes, this overall
\nsound for Tull made it seem like the band was wildly flaying around
\nfor a sound (never mind the fact that synthesizer-driven rock was
\nall the rage for the first half of the ’80s). Instead, the problem
\nwas with songwriting. Most of the tracks on this disc sound like
\nideas which were only partially through their development phases,
\nonly to be committed to tape before they could be finished.<\/p>\n
This, it turns out, is the tragic flaw of
\nBroadsword And The Beast<\/i>. Sure, the chanting of the song
\ntitle on “Beastie” makes it sound ridiculous, but songs like this
\none, “Flying Colours,” “Fallen On Hard Times” and “Slow Marching
\nBand” all sound like they’re just not complete. (A better version
\nof “Fallen On Hard Times” can be found on the box set
\n20 Years Of Jethro Tull<\/i>.) Had Anderson spent some more time
\nfleshing out these tracks, the quality of
\nBroadsword And The Beast<\/i> would have increased
\nsignificantly.<\/p>\n
Alas, we’re left with what we have. And while Jethro Tull tries
\nto recapture some of their past glory on tracks like “Pussy
\nWillow,” “Broadsword” and “Seal Driver,” that magic is nowhere to
\nbe found.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t that Jethro Tull wasn’t ready for the world of
\nelectronic rock; they had shown they were capable of merging the
\nworlds of keyboards and electric guitars on A rather well. It’s
\njust that, after a two-year gap between albums (the longest Tull
\nhad gone to that point between discs), they just sounded very
\ntired. Indeed, even for underdeveloped tracks, the bulk of
\nBroadsword And The Beast<\/i> sounds like the band is going
\nthrough the motions. It would have been better to have worked out
\nall of the kinks with this incarnation of the band and polished up
\nthe songs, then released an album that would have been many levels
\nabove what we have now. (I will admit, though, not all the fans
\nwould still have been pleased — the thrills of the fickle finger
\nof fate. But at least you couldn’t have blamed Anderson for
\ntrying.)<\/p>\n
\nBroadsword And The Beast<\/i> is an album whose edge is
\nincredibly dulled, and whose music shows no fire in the belly. In
\nshort, it just doesn’t cut it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5643],"rating":[5616],"class_list":["post-38030","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-jethro-tull","rating-rating-d"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38030"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}