Folk rock has long been one of Jethro Tull’s strongest suits. Ian Anderson’s integration of Anglo-Celtic folk influences goes all the way back to the band’s second LP, Stand Up (1969), which drew also on Eastern and Eastern European music to affirm Tull wasn’t going to be hidebound by the blues rock sound of This Was (1968).
Curious Ruminant, their 24th studio album, is their folkiest since Stormwatch (1979), which followed Songs From the Wood (1977) and Heavy Horses (1978) to complete the band’s inspired and – given the era, counter-intuitive – folk-rock trilogy. Though the hard-rocking Crest of a Knave (1987) threw up a couple of proggy near-classics, it’s safe to say the latest disc is also Tull’s most accomplished album of wholly new material for decades, unless one includes Anderson’s Thick as a Brick 2 (2012).
It takes a while to get into its groove. The opener “Puppet and the Puppet Master,” a meditation on whether Anderson or his band’s expectant audience call the shots when they perform alive, and the existentially baffled title track are generic Tull rockers, the latter with a pleasing stomp to it and unabashedly rockist riffing from new guitarist Jack Clark.
But the ominous “Dunsinane Hill”, which mordantly analogises recent Westminster betrayals with the skullduggery of the Scottish play, kickstarts a cluster of songs that recall the medieval-Tudor rhythms and arrangements of Tull’s 1970-75 pomp. Scott Hammond's slow drumbeat sounds like a death knell.
There may not be anything as pulsating as “My God” or “A Minstrel in the Gallery” among “The Tipu House”, “Savannah of Paddington Green”, "Stygian Hand”, or “Over Jerusalem” – typical Anderson songs of social/political observation – but they are storm warnings loaded with drama and intricate musicianship. John O’Hara’s accordion-playing brings a shanty-ishness texture to these stirring tunes. “Stygian Hand”, which sounds like it was written by Robin Hood's minstrel Alan-a-Dale, is a cracking “watch where you go” number for anyone venturing onto inner-city mean streets at night.
The closer “Interim Sleep” is a heartfelt poem of consolation, sincerly spoken by Anderson, for anyone grieving for a loved one. Before that, though, comes the album’s pièce de resistance, "Drink From the Same as Well As You", which originated as a demo by Anderson with former Tull keyboards player Andrew Giddings twenty years ago for an unrealised collaboration with Indian bansuri-player Hariprasad Chaurasia.
Sixteen minutes 42 seconds in duration – the exact length of “Baker St. Muse” on Minstrel in the Gallery (1975) – the piece evolves from a deceptively pastoral flute and piano instrumental before Anderson starts singing eight minutes in, his voice laden with contempt for “priestly spirits”, homophobic thugs, vicious spouses or anyone who tramples on anyone else. The wily jester of yore is a horned devil of a scold these days – but he wears it well, and his disgruntlement befits the times.
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