Jethro Tull
Thick As A Brick

Jethro Tull - Thick As A Brick (Chrysalis 1972)

In 1972, after the excellent artistic and commercial success of the album 'Aqualung' released the previous year, Jethro Tull was preparing to release an absolutely ambitious follow-up. 'Thick As A Brick' is indeed the first occasion where Ian Anderson's band vigorously approaches the then-prevailing styles of progressive rock: the album is essentially composed of a single long piece forcibly (and fortunately) divided into two distinct parts, as was obligatory at the time due to its vinyl release. However, the personality and originality of the Tull sound emerge powerfully, and the album is absolutely one of the pinnacles of the band's career.

The ever-ironic Ian Anderson invents the story that the lyrics of the suite were written by a very young genius (8 years old), later disqualified as the winner of an important literary contest, Gerald Bostock, nicknamed Little Milton. Ian Anderson pretends to take the trouble to give new light and visibility to the boy's masterpiece (who would also appear on the album cover receiving the award), by including the 'repudiated' text in his new creation: thus achieving the effect of giving the audience the impression that his visions and words for the piece come from the mind of a child.
Many people at the time believed this story blindly.

From a textual point of view, the LP presents itself as a concept album, in a certain sense Tull's second after 'Aqualung', within which Anderson dealt with the theme of religion with great maturity and frankness.
The piece itself sees Jethro Tull at the top of their technical and melodic capabilities: the then-new addition to the band of the incredible drummer Barriemore Barlow decidedly strengthens the group's sound.
The track is a continuous, always inspired stream of melodic and sound inventions, with the author’s flute always in great prominence. In the piece, there are several recurring sound themes that Anderson masterfully revisits, reshaping them each time, changing tone, or vocal line, or adding/modifying a couple of chords, and changing their meaning entirely. And his absolute ability as a great and eclectic author emerges.
The style of the album is in many parts epic and pompous, but Anderson is capable of staying well clear of the excesses of progressive rock of the time and is always able to maintain balance in his creation by alternating frenetic moments with sweet, soft, and dreamy parts.

In the album, Anderson plays many instruments, but it is with the flute and acoustic guitar that he manages to impose his unmistakable style in an absolutely clear and distinct way. The album is full of folk sounds mixed with the rock sound of the era, and although it may thus appear as a convoluted work, the suite can be listened to with an absolutely rare lightness and pleasure for a musical piece of such size and ambition.
This is because it is precisely Anderson's crystalline and exhilarating melodic inventiveness that continually gives the piece new cues and new meanings.
The masterpiece is framed by a more than fitting cover, also a result of the band’s great creativity of that period: the vinyl is inserted within a fake newspaper featuring the aforementioned child on the cover, and inside a lot of articles, cartoons, and pranks designed by the group’s members.
In Anderson's own words "We took more time to complete the artwork than to write and record the entire record!"

In the following album, Tull would again follow the direction of the suite with the 1973 album 'A Passion Play', a work even more complex, convoluted, and dark than the previous one, which divided critics and fans sharply between those who consider it the band's masterpiece and those who see it as the worst album.
Doubts, however, have never arisen regarding 'Thick As A Brick': Jethro Tull's fifth album is a timeless work that retains its melodic freshness even many years later, and every rock music enthusiast in general, and of the 70s, in particular, should know and have it in their collection of musical jewels, preserving it like a small treasure.

Review by Alessandro Tosetti