Jethro Tull - Songs From the Wood
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Free Music Notes for Songs From the Wood
Free Music Review: The first of Tull's "so-called" folk-rock trilogy still resonates 30 years on
Hit: 5 Stars
Jethro Tull's tenth studio album entitled Songs From The Wood was released in February of 1977.
The album saw the band (which comprised of lead singer/songwriter/flute player Ian Anderson plus guitarist Martin Barre, keyboard player John Evan, drummer Barriemore Barlow, bass player John Glascock whom were now joined by orchestrator David Palmer as second keyboard player) go in a different musical route after the dismal sales of 1976's concept album Too Old To Rock and Roll Too Young to Die (despite the fact that album is one of my personal favorites which was overlooked in the year of Frampton Comes Alive, "Afternoon Delight" and many of the disco trash starting to infiltrate music in 1976). The Songs From The Wood album when released was the folkiest in sound that the band had recorded up to that point. Was it a good or bad thing, read on and find out as I did when I heard the album on vinyl late in 2006 and then acquired the remastered CD a few months ago.
The title cut opens the album with a superb and funnyish sounding acapella singing which then gives way into a killer song with it ping-ponging between folk and classic hard rock tinged prog rock.
The next track is the acoustic number "Jack-in-the-Green" which tells about an old protector and nurturer of the English woods. The track also states if Jack still exists in this modern world of cars and power lines amongs other things. "Beltane" follows and is another great tune. We follow with the rocker "Hunting Girl" which uses a foxhunting equestrienne as a metaphor to a high-born woman who takes advantage of a lower class person. Great rocker. The first side closed with the band's second Holiday season track "Ring Out Solstice Bells" which is a great number to play at Christmas.
The second half of the album starts with "Velvet Green" which is as folk influenced as can be. The track is a love song set in the folk mentality. "The Whistler" follows and is another English folk influenced number which tells of a minstrel type individual. Next is the epic "Pibroch (Hat in Hand)" which is a rocker with some folk music influences but just burns! The original album ends with the folk number "Fire at Midnight" which celebrates a fellow relaxing by the fire with his love at the end of a long, hard day.
The Songs From The Wood album originally peaked at #8 on the Billboard album chart (to date Tull's last US Top 10 charting album) and was the band's first million seller since 1975's Minstrel in the Gallery.
In 2003, the album was re-released as a remastered CD with two additional songs. First is "Beltane" which is a great number about celebration of the Celtic festival Beltane. Next is a live BBC recording of "Velvet Green" which is probably from the BBC transmitted show which is out on bootleg as Songs From the Hippodrome.
Songs From The Wood is a great record, and still sounds fresh today.
RECOMMENDED!
Free Music Review: Pseudo-Elizabethan Folk-Prog, anyone?
Hit: 5 Stars
Another writer made a valid point when alluding to the part nostalgia can play in the appeal of an older album to an "older" listener. There is a distinction to be made between first- and second-generation Jethro Tull fans when it comes to their preferred Tull albums. I myself fall somewhere between the generations. I "discovered" Jethro Tull in the late 70's and this was the first of their albums I heard in its entirety. I was a little young to have any nostalgia for "Aqualung" or "Thick As A Brick" as new releases--I don't tie the experience of first hearing them to any significant events of my life.
Songs From The Wood is a different story. I played this album constantly during my early teens and it was as important to me as any album in those formative years. But it isn't just nostalgia that makes me rank it still today as the best album in my collection, now that the collection numbers in the thousands.
Complexity, melody, harmony, inventiveless, musicianship, literate (even poetic) lyrics, a light-hearted uplifting mood--this album has so many things a music lover can appreciate, and it has them in spades.
You can forget your preconceptions about the mad flautist perched on one leg, the "dinosaur rock" categorization this band carries in the minds of many, and the "Best Heavy Metal Album" Grammy award debacle. You can forget the fact that other Tull albums were more political, or more "relevent", or more this or more that. Just listen with open ears and mind to this album and you'll realize you're hearing a band in the act of creating a genre. Is it Prog? Is it Folk Rock? Elizabethan Rock? It's not really worth arguing over. It fits no category neatly.
But one thing it undeniably is: great. It's a songwriter and a band emerging from any categories they'd previously fit into and forging new territory. And few bands have even followed where this album's bold steps travelled. The name of Blackmore's Night comes up. And as a fan of Blackmore's Night who has travelled hundreds of miles to see them live, I can tell you they are a pale, infinitely less creative version of "Songs From The Wood"-era Tull. I'll buy every album Blackmore's Night ever releases, but only to taste in watered-down form the flavour I first sipped from that much richer Cup Of Wonder, Songs From The Wood.
This is an album that doesn't go out of style, because it was never in style. It's truly timeless, which itself wouldn't matter if it weren't some of the most intricately crafted music and literate lyrics of it's time, or of any time in pop music's history.
Listen to it once and it might not sink in--there's a lot to this music. But listen to it three or four times, and you'll have to listen a hundred more. This is a masterpiece.
Free Music Review: Such cynicism!
Hit: 5 Stars
It's hard for me to believe that so many people find this album mediocre. Of course this is a matter of personal taste, but this is my all time favorite Tull album. There is so much going on at any one moment; all the melodies are strong, the hooks are wonderful, and yet this is some of the most complex and challenging arrangement work that Anderson and the band have ever done (second perhaps only to Passion Play). The band membership at this point was also top notch, and it shows in the sheer (small "b") baroque of the instrumental interplay. I'm particularly partial, as a bassist myself, to John "Brittledick" Glascock (may he Rock in Peace), who I consider the best bass player Tull ever had (sorry Peggy, you come in a close second).I suppose whether or not you like the lyrics is also a matter of taste. You will definitely *not* like them if you refuse to hear them with the tongue-in-cheek flavor that they're written. The combination of seriousness with fun is a very, very English outlook, poorly understood by Americans All of you out there who think that Tull peaked with Thick as a Brick: the music on Brick is fantastic, and the lyrics near-literary quality, but you seem to have missed the point. That album was intended as a joke, from the front cover to the very last note. Is it any wonder that Ian Anderson is still, to this day, occasionally asked "So, whatever happened to Gerry Bostock, then?" Not to mention that while the lyrics on SftW may *describe* "country living" topics, they're not anywhere near *about* those things. If you cannot read beneath the veneer of woodland fairies and toddies on the mantlepiece to what the songs are actually *about*, then you'll never really get it anyway.
I absolutely love the word-play in Velvet Green; it points out very well the difference between being liscentious and being crassly vulgar. Solstice Bells is a little more serious in it's treatment of the May Day celebration, and the choruses a bit heavy handed and hymn-like, but dang if the production and arrangement aren't sharp, tight, and clever.
Also, IMHO, the remastering is *very* good, some of the best such re-issue work I've yet heard.
I'm sure there are some people, somewhere, who think that the Beatles started to go downhill after Help! Or that Led Zeppelin peaked with the II album (just as a couple of examples). I'm not one of those people. Give me sophistication, maturity, and good humor whatever the date and time, and to heck with the chronological "coolness" and the "not the original band" snobbery.
Pass the word and pass the lady!
Free Music Review: Songs (and inspiration) drawn from a sylvan glade
Hit: 5 Stars
This 1977 release presents a fine mixture of harder edged progressive rock and early English folk music that the group has maintained to this very day. Overall, this is another of my favorites from Jethro Tull and presents the band firing on all cylinders; especially after the "not-so-well-received" album Too Old to Rock n' Roll, Too Young to Die (1976).
The players on Songs from the Wood include Ian Anderson (flute, acoustic guitar, mandolin, whistles, vocals, all instruments on Jack-in-the-Green), Martin Barre (electric guitar and lute), Barriemore Barlow (drums, marimba, glockenspiel, bells), John Glascock (bass, vocals), John Evans (piano, organ and synthesizers) and David Palmer (piano, portative organ and synthesizers). This is a great lineup and John Glascock and Barriemore Barlow are simply fantastic throughout.
The nine tracks on the album range in length from 2:27 to 8:38 and range from purely acoustic tracks heavily influenced by early English folk music, to more progressive pieces that feature great ensemble work, tasteful synthesizer and organ playing and (on occasion) hard-edged electric guitar playing by Martin. Although the heavier, proggier tracks like Hunting Girl are very satisfying, I especially appreciated the quieter, folksier pieces on the album. Overall, I found that the use of traditional folk instruments including the lute and mandolin along with the various and sundry bits of percussion added a rich, earthy texture to the music.
Like some other folks here, I have owned this album in one form or other for the past umpteen million years. This remastered album is something special though. The remastered CD features breathtaking sonic clarity, lyrics, photos and additional liner notes. However, although the bonus studio track Beltane is pleasant enough and I enjoyed the live version of Velvet Green, I was more than pleased with the tunes included on the original album.
All in all, this is a great album that presents some excellent material from one of my favorite periods in the career of this group. I did like this remastered CD and found that it was a suitable replacement for my (long gone) vinyl LP. For those folks that liked Songs from the Wood, the follow-up Heavy Horses (1978) is also pretty good and more or less maintains this approach. Highly recommended.
Free Music Review: The Quintessential Spirit Lifter
Hit: 5 Stars
After reading every review for Songs From the Wood, I came to the realization that we Tull fans are kindred spirits. Thanks to each and every one of you for voicing your thoughts, feelings, and opinions about this and other Tull albums...I feel "normal" amidst your company.
I really cannot say if this is THE BEST Tull album. Yet, I couldn't effectively make an argument to the contrary. I know that SFTW is timeless, and like some other reviewers, feel that this element adds a uniqueness to the music. Of course, the musicianship, song arrangements, and vocals are astonishingly wonderful.
I saw Jethro Tull a couple of months after this album was released and, like another reviewer, still feel that this was the best concert I have ever attended (and I have seen some people...Yes, Kansas, Zeppelin, the Stones, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Rush, the Who...just to name a few of the "name" acts). I will never forget how excited I was to actually see and hear these songs reproduced so faithfully, so well, so dramatically, and with such a superb sound quality. It was truly an experience I could never forget.
Be that as it may, My spirit soars in a similar fashion while listening to Heavy Horses, side one of Thick as a Brick, much of Living in the Past, much of Stormwatch. And I feel a wonderful, timeless feeling when listening to "Back to the Family," "Look to the Sun," "Fat Man," etc. from Stand Up. Likewise, "Inside," from Benefit, "Salamander" from Too Old to Rock and Roll, Too Young to Die, "Cold Wind From Valhalla" from Minstrel in the Gallery, much from Aqualung, "Skating Away..." from War Child. I could go on and on, but I think that you fellow Tull fans understand what I am trying to express here.
This is simply great music from a great, largely unique band. And I have always felt that Ian Anderson is a music legend, a minstrel for the ages. I highly recommend Songs From the Wood, and (chronologically speaking) every Jethro Tull album beginning with Stand Up and ending with The Broadsword and the Beast.
This review is meant to inspire anyone who has never heard Songs From the Wood to do so. It will be money well-spent. I'll let others battle over the supposed "pre-eminent" Tull album.