•
Rating: So, after releasing the good but not very inspired 'Heavy Horses', the band launched a new album on the market, this "Stormwatch" (we're in 1979).
Generally, this album is classified as the end of the so-called "folk triad" (to be precise, as all Tull fans will know, 'Songs From The Wood', 'Heavy Horses' and this 'Stormwatch'). Indeed, a certain folk component is present in the album (just think of "North Sea Oil" or "Dun Ringill", excellent songs in typical Tull style), but there are still some old progressive ghosts, like the marvelous and long "Dark Ages", with its dark atmospheres (with a title like this, of course, it's the least one might expect), epic and with a driving rhythm, or a beautiful pure hard rock song, "Something's On The Move", with its powerful riff and definitely connected to more classic hard rock, as well as tracks like "Old Ghosts" and "Orion", which betray a certain beginning of style change (especially the former), while remaining linked to the folk à la Jethro Tull. We also find two pleasant instrumentals, "Warm Sporran" and the closing "Elegy", the first styled like a bluesy march, while the second, in my opinion, the absolute masterpiece of the album along with the aforementioned "Dark Ages", is set against a more bucolic background (today I'm into grandiose terms), resulting in something very evocative, thanks to the interweaving of flute and acoustic guitar, to which the electric guitar is then added, somewhat reminiscent of the excellent instrumental "After The Ordeal" by Genesis in 'Selling England By The Pound'.
"Flying Dutchmann" is a song suspended, instead, between hard rock, progressive and folk, cute but unnecessarily prolonged. In 'Stormwatch', we then find the first Tull song I feel I can call bad: yes, I'm referring to "Home", cloying and useless, which could have been saved only if it ended after the first chorus, but it relentlessly goes on for three minutes (seems short, but if a song is bad, it feels like an eternity), although, fortunately, it's not so bad as to be unlistenable (if I had to make another comparison with Genesis, I would suggest that musical syrup which is "Your Own Special Way" from Wind & Wuthering); however, "Home" takes away almost nothing from the album, which proves to be by far the best, in my opinion, of the entire folk triad, also thanks to a rediscovered fluidity of Anderson's writing, which seemed to have been at least diminished with the previous 'Heavy Horses', which I think is beautiful but too repetitive.
'Stormwatch', therefore, decently closes the decade of the '70s, before the beginning of electronics with A... But that's another de-review.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 North Sea Oil (03:11)
Black and viscous --- bound to cure blue lethargy
Sugar-plum petroleum for energy
Tightrope-balanced payments need a small reprieve
Oh, please believe we want to be
in North Sea Oil
New-found wealth sits on the shelf of yesterday
Hot-air balloon --- inflation soon will make you pay
Riggers rig and diggers dig their shallow grave
But we'll be saved and what we crave
is North Sea Oil
Prices boom in Aberdeen and London Town
Ten more years to lay the fears, erase the frown
before we are all nuclear --- the better way!
Oh, let us pray: we want to stay
in North Sea Oil
02 Orion (03:58)
Orion, won't you give me your star sign
Orion, get up on the sky-line
I'm high on my hill and I feel fine
Orion, let's sip the heaven's heady wine
Orion, light your lights:
come guard the open spaces
from the black horizon to the pillow where I lie.
Your faithful dog shines brighter than its lord and master
Your jewelled sword twinkles as the world rolls by.
So come up singing above the cloudy cover
Stare through at people who toss fitful in their sleep.
I know you're watching as the old gent by the station
scuffs his toes on old fag packets lying in the street
And silver shadows flick across the closing bistro.
Sweet waiters link their arms and patter down the street,
their words lost blowing on cold winds in darkest Chelsea.
Prime years fly fading with each young heart's beat
Orion, won't you make me a star sign
Orion, get up on the sky-line
I'm high on your love and I feel fine
Orion, let's sip the heaven's heady wine
And young girls shiver as they wait by lonely bus-stops
after sad parties: no-one to take them home
to greasy bed-sitters and make a late-night play
for lost virginity a thousand miles away.
03 Home (02:45)
As the dawn sun breaks over sleepy gardens
I'll be here to do all things to comfort you.
And though I've been away
left you alone this way
why don't you come awake
and let your first smile take me home.
The shadows in the park were longer yesterday
and Lady Luck stood still, waiting for the kill.
And on a jumbo ride
over seas grey, deep and wide
I flew for heaven's sake
and let the angels take me home.
Down steep and narrow lanes I see the chimneys smoking
above the golden fields ... know what the robin feels
in his summer jamboree.
All elements agree
in sweet and stormy blend ---
midwife to winds that send me home.
04 Dark Ages (09:13)
"Darlings, are you ready for the long winter's fall?"
Said the lady in her parlor, said the butler in the hall.
"Is there time for another?" cried the drunkard in his sleep.
"Not likely," said the little child. "What's done the Lord can keep."
And the vicar stands a-praying, and the television dies
As the white dot flickers and is gone, and no-one stops to cry.
Dark ages, shaking the dead
Closed pages, better not read
Cold rages, they burn in your head
The big jet rumbles over runway miles that scar the patchwork green
Where slick tycoons and rich buffoons have opened up the seam
Of golden nights and champagne flights, ad-man overkill
And in the haze, consumer-crazed, we take the sugar pill.
Dark ages, shaking the dead
Closed pages, better not read
Cold rages, they burn in your head
Jagged fires mark the picket lines the politicians weep
And mealy-mouthed, down corridors of power on tip-toe creep.
Come and see bureaucracy make its final heave
And let the new disorder through while senses take their leave.
Dark ages, shaking the dead
Closed pages, better not read
Cold rages, they burn in your head
Families screaming line the streets and put the windows through
In corner shops, where keepers kept the country's life-blood blue.
Take their pick, and try the trick with loaves and fishes shared
And the vicar shouts as the lights go out, and no-one really cares.
Dark ages, shaking the dead
Closed pages, better not read
Cold rages, they burn in your head
"Darlings, are you ready for the long winter's fall?"
Said the lady in her parlor, said the butler in the hall.
Dark ages, shaking the dead
Closed pages, better not read
Cold rages, they burn in your head
08 Dun Ringill (02:41)
Clear light on a slick palm
as I mis-deal the day
Slip the night from a shaved pack
make a marked card play
Call twilight hours down
from a heaven home
high above the highest bidder
for the good Lord's throne
In the wee hours I'll meet you
down by Dun Ringill ---
oh, and we'll watch the old gods play
by Dun Ringill
We'll wait in stone circles
`til the force comes through ---
lines joint in faint discord
and the stormwatch brews
a concert of kings
as the white sea snaps
at the heels of a soft prayer
whispered
In the wee hours I'll meet you
down by Dun Ringill ---
oh, and I'll take you quickly
by Dun Ringill.
Loading comments slowly
Other reviews
By v8interceptor
This album seems to me to recover the general sound explored in BURSTING OUT.
Weary album but still an album by JETHRO TULL so worth having to understand the development of sound and creativity.
