I've been listening to Kansas a lot lately, their best-known albums Leftoverture and Point of Know Return. I generally skip "Carry On Wayward Son" as it's one of those staples of classic rock radio that I've grown tired of yet I still listen to "Point of Know Return" and "Dust in the Wind". Go figure.
Kansas often get lumped in with contemporaries like Foreigner and Boston who filled arenas playing melodic hard rock that was a few more steps divorced from the rock's blues roots than their late-60s progenitors. But I think of them as being the American cousins of British symphonic progressive rock.
Last year former member Robby Steinhardt died and I wrote about how I view the band as the Aaron Copeland of progressive rock with their American take on a style of music invented by the British. I noted how their American sounds and lyrics about Native American peoples distinguish them from their peers on the other side of the Atlantic. But there are other lyrics that their proggy influences like Genesis, Yes, and ELP would never have committed to song, at least not until the 1970s were well in the rear view mirror. Take this lovely verse from "Opus Insert":
But there's too many empty lives my friend And we just can't let them waste away For this life is a precious thing my friend And we just can't wait another day
That would never have appeared on a 70s Genesis album and, although it's a sentiment that Jon Anderson would have shared, no Yes lyric would dare express a humanistic statement of empathy this directly.
One song I've really come to enjoy is "Closet Chronicles" from Point of Know Return. I am not sure what the lyrics are about. For me, they depict a Howard Hughes figure as if portrayed by Terry Gilliam. The subject is described as "the king" but he gazes down at the world from the 42nd floor. A captain of industry, perhaps? One day "he journeyed deep into his mind". When he wasn't pondering life's great mysteries, he dreamed.
Daydreams filled his nighttimes And night dreams filled his days Confusion and uncertainty A puzzled mind of haze
Whatever the song is about, the music is wonderful with plenty of twists and turns.
When I begin to see Orion in the November night sky, I begin to really feel that it is autumn. It marks the time to prepare for the onrush of winter by bringing snow shovels out from the shed and mentally shifting to a state of mind that can contend with less daylight, dead plants, and falling temperatures. This astronomical recognition began for me in 2003. I was single and unemployed that fall and did a lot of housesitting for a friend whose job was taking him out of town on a regular basis.
That autumn had a real cloud over it. It was the year that Johnny Cash and Warren Zevon died within less than a week of each other and their deaths seemed to emphasize my own personal struggles. Leaves began to turn and fall, the days grew cooler, and the world just seemed intent to cast a pall over my life. My friend's house was in rural Edgerton so I had a nice view of the skies.
I don't recall how it was that I began to take notice of Orion but I did. In his own way, he kept me company on many a long, lonely night. A familiar pattern in the sky that lent itself to contemplation. I'm thankful that over the years the sight of those stars has changed from a sullen occasion to a more joyful one. Seeing Orion in the November night sky brings back happy memories of my brother who studied to be an astronomer at one time and makes me look forward to the snow that will be falling soon enough.
On a Saturday afternoon last month, I made my initial visit to
Starkweather Brewing. It was about 12:15, methinks, so the place had only been
open for a quarter of an hour. Yet the bar area had zero empty seats while the other
part of the brewpub with the larger communal tables had a smattering of folks
enjoying a cold one, perhaps even carousing. Despite having changed owners and gotten a new name, the
tavern at 2439 Atwood Avenue seems to have retained its neighborhood vibe.
Last summer it was still home to Next Door Brewing but the
pandemic and a desire to spend more time with their families nudged the owners
into accepting an offer for the business. Peter Schroder, who used to brew at
One Barrel down the street, amongst other places, and his partners Tom McVary,
Michael Chronister, and Tom Gosse bought out Next Door and rechristened the joint
Starkweather Brewing Company.
Starkweather, named after the nearby creek, is my local brewpub
so I was excited to hear of its opening which was on 10 February, if memory
serves. The initial beer list was posted online and it was both impressive and
worrying simultaneously. Impressive in that there were 15-20 beers on it. Worrying
in that I could have been looking at a case of quantity over quality. I suppose Schroder
had time to blow waiting on walls to be painted and bureaucrats to approve licenses
so why not brew? Still, it came across as an attempt to dazzle with the sheer number of offerings.
Hell, maybe Schroder is a beer demigod
with 18/00 brewing skills and they were all top notch. But I'd feel more confident if there were 4 or 5 brews, a more reasonable number of styles for someone to master. Heck, maybe most folks are content to be dazzled by a lengthy beer list and brews that are simply good enough. But I'm not a brewpub
owner.
Despite some skepticism, I went to Starkweather excited to
try their rye brown ale because, well, rye is a very tasty grain and tasty
grains make for tasty beers. This would be the third or fourth rye beer I've had this year. A bumper crop! In addition, Starkweather is my local brewery. I want delicious rye beers to be available a healthy walk,
short bike ride, or shorter bus ride away.
The rye brown ale is called Musical Couches. For this brew, Starkweather collaborated with not only the former occupants of the brewhouse,
Next Door, but also Adventure Club Brewing Company up in Bayfield which I'd
never heard of until I read the beer's description.
This beer looked magnificent with a lovely clarity and a deep brownish red hue. My pour produced a small off-white patch of foam that was off in a hurry. I couldn't see any bubbles inside. It was sweetly scented with a berry-laced honey aroma being most prominent followed by a dash of caramel and a pinch of grassy hops.
A light body was accompanied by an equally delicate fizz. I tasted berry and a little roasty grain on my first couple sips. Subsequent quaffing revealed traces of milk chocolate and my precious earthy rye. That berry-like taste faded shortly after swallowing leaving behind a mild dose of herbal hops that provided a modicum of dryness. A vaguely minty taste settled on my tongue as well.
While Musical Couches looks great, I found that it tasted watery with too much of that berry flavor. Maybe it's me because it seems like I am tasting that flavor a lot lately. Is my palate to blame? Is there a certain malt variety that's readily available in these days of shortages that's going around? I love the hops here but this beer tasted like a mess to me otherwise.
It looks like there's been a little turnover on their beer menu so I hope to try another Starkweather flavor soon.
Junk food pairing: as I type, Starkweather's kitchen is not yet open so, if you're drinking a Musical Couches there, run down the street to the gas station and grab a bag of Turtle Flavored Chex Mix.
There's a documentary about Frank Lloyd Wright available for free online. For a local angle, it features Taliesin as well as the Johnson Wax building in Racine.
There were
signs of the impending holidays when I was up north. Trailers stacked with Christmas trees were making their way to retailers as festive lights, wreaths, and other seasonal decorations were being mounted on light poles, hung on storefronts, etc. And I saw more than one notice
such as this:
Lefse is a
Norwegian flat bread made from potatoes while Sandbakkles are Norwegian
(Swedish too?) almond butter cookies poplar at Christmas. I didn't look at the
grocery store in Chetek for lefse but there are 3 brands of it at the supermarket I shop at here in Madison that are available year-round.
The impending holidays
also mean that lutefisk starts appearing at the supermarket.
Lutefisk is
a Norwegian delicacy(?! - ed.) made from dried whitefish that is then pickled in lye. After a rehydrating soak, it is thoroughly rinsed and then gently heated and served drowning in butter, from my experience.
It's a Christmas "treat", if fish pickled in lye can be so described, and seems to be more popular with the older set. I am unsure if this is because people become more enamored of tradition as they grow older or that they lose their sense of taste as they age.
Lutheran churches and Sons of Norway lodges across Wisconsin have lutefisk
dinners come the holiday season. Well, they did before Covid struck.
Personally,
I am happy with a ham or turkey for Christmas dinner.
********
With my
vacation over, it was back to the proverbial salt mines. The air had turned decidedly chillier so I
started to bundle up a bit more for my treks to the bus stop. I don't mind the nip in the November air and
there were some very pretty sunrises to greet me as I stepped out the door for
my walk. Late autumn has a distinct smell to it. With the greenery gone and the humidity low, the air takes on a thin, almost minty scent as crisp breezes nibble at your cheeks. This is occasionally interrupted by the smell of a neighbor's fireplace or stove hard at work which makes me quite envious of people who can indulge their atavistic desires and safely watch flames from the comfort of their couch.
And
on those days when I worked from home, I got to see the dawn from my seat
upstairs. The window by my desk faces south and, with the sun rising in the southeast this time of
year, I was treated to some wonderful views at Prime when monks all around Madison were praying in an easterly direction.
********
You may
recall from an entry or 2 back that I bought a head of cabbage from a produce
stand up north. With the weather turning colder, my stomach desires heartier
fare. Isn't that the case for everyone? I suspect that the heavier foods of
winter are more about feeling full and thusly having a good excuse to lie on the
couch instead of going outside rather than actually being a bulwark against the
cold. Regardless, I decided to make Polish cabbage rolls - Gołąbki - with the
cabbage. If the Russian restaurants I've been to are any indication, then it would seem that all Slavic/Eastern European peoples stuff cabbage leaves in one fashion or another.
Shortly
after making my intentions known to my Frau, she texted me a recipe for Gołąbki
soup that promised all the flavor of Gołąbki with much less work. She continued
her internet searches and found one for her beloved instant pot. It turned out very
well. Very well, indeed.
Truth be
known, it was more of a stew than a soup but was very tasty regardless of your gastronomic taxonomy. And it really did taste like well-sauced
cabbage rolls.
********
One November weekend, my Frau, a friend of
hers, and I headed out to our favorite orchard, Lapacek's, which is 20ish miles
north of us in rural Poynette, for their holiday craft fair. Poynette is famous** for having originally been called Pauquette. Apparently someone had dreadful handwriting back in 1850 because an application for the Pauquette post office was misread as "Poynette" and the name stuck. Or rather, residents were stuck with the name.
We
first went to Lapacek's in 2007, if memory serves, when I heard tell of their Wolf River apples which were supposedly so large, that you needed only one of them per pie. This sounded like some kind of P.T. Barnum-esque chicanery so I simply had to investigate this extraordinary claim. Treks
out there became a yearly ritual for us. Sadly, they pulled up stakes and moved to a new spot
several years ago and I don't believe they have any Wolf River apple trees these days.
Still, come August and September, we always have a surfeit of apples in the kitchen and plenty of pomaceous goodness on our plates.
Well, the one apple per pie claim turned out to be true. (That's a Cortland on the left, I think.) These apples were genuinely huge. They originated in the late 19th century up in northern Wisconsin and were bred by someone who lived in the town of Wolf River.
The Frau and
her friend perused the crafts while I contemplated the
foodstuffs. Doughnuts are more my thing, you see, although there were some candles that
tempted me. At checkout, we said hi to Kim who is the leading craftsperson in
the Lapacek enterprise. We chatted with her that first year we visited the
orchard and I explained to her that we'd been lured by the promise of the Wolf River apples. Shortly after I blogged
about them, Kim found the post and made the connection. And so we've
been the Wolf River apple couple to her ever since.
I look forward to their apple cider doughnuts every autumn and they certainly didn't disappoint this time around.
That
evening we were invited out to a local brewery, Karben4, with some of the Frau's friends to hang out in one of their Covid protection dome thingies.
It's for those who don't want to risk going maskless in their taproom with the hoi
polloi. (Full disclosure: one of the Frau's friends won a 2-hour stint in the
dome.) At first, I had flashbacks to Bio-Dome and was unsure about this whole endeavor. But, with no Pauly Shore in sight, I soon came to believe that R. Buckminster Fuller would no doubt be proud to see folks hanging out
in geodesic domes drinking finely crafted beer.
There were 8
chairs, a space heater, a few small tables, and a ceiling light projector to
add some psychedelic mood lighting. I guess each dome has a theme and ours was
space. Thusly there were little astronaut figures hanging here and there from the lattice work.
While it was certainly a chilly night, we stayed
rather warm. I suppose the beer helped in that regard. My favorite was the
Oaktober Ale. It's a bit like an Oktoberfest lager - but an ale. And it's aged
on oak to boot. The woody flavor is subtle but extremely tasty.
Speaking
of beer, I have heard that a Chicago brewery, Hop Butcher, is making a special
holiday brew this year:
Yes, it's a
stout brewed with Frango Mint oil. This will no doubt bring back lots of
memories for many Chicagoans. Does Macy's sell Frango Mints or did the brand die
along with Marshall Fields? When I heard of it, I thought of eating
those mints and of all the good childhood memories of going downtown to look at the
window displays at Christmastime.
Well, enough
about food. I am making myself hungry and I have done more than eat and drink
lately.
When life slowed down for a spell with Covid lockdowns, I found myself with a lot of spare time and I used some of that to seek out new music. One band I discovered in 2020 was The Black Tones.
Hailing from Seattle, the band is siblings Eva (guitar/vocals) and Cedric (drums) Walker and a rotating cast of bass players when they're on stage. The influence of another Seattleite looms large over the band - Jimi Hendrix. Eva gives her wah-wah pedal plenty of love, bending her guitar's fuzzy tones in waves of sonic goodness.
But this is no Hendrix cover band. Cedric is more about getting into a groove than than the more manic playing of Mitch Mitchell. Plus they veer from the blues and into punk and even stuff like Krautrock on the odd occasion. It's like garage rock+.
In February they released a single on Seattle's venerable Sub Pop label. The A-side was this song, "The End of Everything". It begins with a spacey slab of feedback that is joined by a jangly riff that reminds me of "Superman" by The Clique. Eva's voice, sounding more confident and powerful than ever, bursts in: "My name is Jesus, I've come to fuck shit up!" The cleaner, jangly chords are joined by their fuzzier counterparts and this makes for a sweeping, full soundscape.
Considering the events of the past couple years, perhaps an eschatological gem like this is appropriate.
Tortelvis, the greatest singer of his generation, once confessed, "I've read this damn book 22 times, Charlie, and I still don't understand the thing." This admission, in the classic Dread Zeppelin song, "Moby Dick", is something I can sympathize with. I've never read Moby Dick, truth be told, so it's the sentiment of the statement that hits close to home, not the content. Just wanted to be clear on that point.
I've consumed various types of pilsners and I still don't understand all of the differences. There's Bohemian pilsners, German ones, American, Italian, CBD, French, Keller - who knows what other kinds. India Pale Pilsners are no doubt a thing somewhere. So, Czech pilsners are maltier than German ones, correct? And they are hoppier too with a bold Saaz bite, right? It's unclear to me what French pilsners are exactly. You'd think the French are too busy with wine, baguettes, and Jerry Lewis to brew beer. Are they a distinct style? Or just a German pils brewed with French hops? I drank one recently at Working Draft here in Madison called "Le Pils". I am clueless as to what made it French but I'd bet it's the hops. It had a delectable taste featuring lemon and spicy pepper flavors. Aramis hops, perhaps?
Yes, I just found those on a search.
Now that I think about it, I doubt that I've ever had an Italian pilsner. Certainly not one from Italy but there is an outside chance that an American one has passed my lips. I'm not sure what is particularly Italian about them. One moment...
Jeff Alworth says that there are a few elements that go into an Italian pilsner that give it a distinct Italian quality but that American brewers have basically reduced its uniqueness down to dry hopping. I am shocked - SHOCKED! - that American brewers would do such a thing.
Oh well.
This brings me to Dovetail's Pilsner which, to the best of my knowledge, made its way to Madison for the very first time recently. The can's label says only "PILSNER" and I was forced to go the brewery's website to find more info. There it is described as "a showcase for Czech hops" and the brewery's marketing team go on to boast that it was brewed with "heaven's water", which sounds like Chicago tap water that has had some chemistry voodoo worked upon it so that it was akin to the soft water of the pilsner's hometown, Plzeň, in the Czech Republic.
Man, water chemistry is not my thing and I am thinking I might have to summon the ghost of Robert Boyle to explain this to me.
Let's see if I can get this right. Plzeň's water is soft, i.e. - lacking in bicarbonates and pretty low in calcium too. This makes for water more on the acidic side which favors paler malts and brings out bready flavors. Now, why this should be is yet unknown to me but that sounds like the Bohemian pilsners I've quaffed. My searches yield lots of articles that merely say, "Want to brew a pilsner and have naturally soft water? You're golden." They are short on the details, though, about how x number of moles of some compound dissolved in the water yields a beer that is high in I.B.U.s - International Breadiness Units. As best I can piece it together, acidity levels are key to enzymes being happy and happy enzymes means tasty beer.
The water in Plzeň apparently also lacks sulfates which enhance hop bitterness so I guess Czech brewers have traditionally added more hops, hence the more intense spiciness of their pilsners, perhaps?
Ha! I probably have that all wrong but I am going with it anyway.
If Dovetail is going to go through all the trouble of mimicking the water of a city thousands of miles away, the beer is going to be good, right?
WRONG!
I kid! I kid!
Dovetail's beers are always so pretty. I feel badly because I don't have a good camera that can really capture their alluring beauty. Long before this glass got anywhere near my mouth, I was entranced by the beer that could launch a thousand sips. At least I managed to find a pilsner glass for the occasion. Dovetail's Pilsner is a lovely light gold with a slight haze to it. I poured for the head and got a big one. Lots of firm, white foam was mine, all mine. It smelled as good as it looked with a delicate cracker aroma joined by grass and peppery hops.
The malt tasted like biscuit as a firm fizz made its way to the back of my mouth. That toasty, melanoidiny, bready flavor was here in spades. Yum! As expected, it had a light body. Oh, and the hops tasted spicy to me, just as advertised. (Or was that because I had read the description beforehand?) Upon swallowing, I found that the biscuit taste lingered a while but was eventually overwhelmed by some herbal-peppery hop flavors that were a bit dank and resinous. They were not wanting in bitterness and left things on a fairly dry note. My glass was decorated with some wonderful lacing.
Oh mama! This was an extremely tasty brew. I don't know what kind of hydromancy they performed to get that heavenly water but it paid off. The soft biscuit flavor was simply divine and it melded perfectly with those spicy hops.
Junk food pairing: just as Dovetail used some diablerie to transform ordinary tap water into heaven's water, Utz performed some kind of alchemical chicanery with fried dill pickles so pair your Pilsner with a bag of Utz's Fried Dill Pickle potato chips.
Back in 2011, Ian Anderson apparently told Jethro Tull drummer
Doane Perry and guitarist Martin Barre that their services were no longer
needed and then put the band on indefinite hiatus. Barre contends that he and
Perry were blindsided by the news while Anderson maintains he was diplomatic about the parting of the ways. Setting out as a solo artist, Anderson
retained the services of keyboardist/ accordionist John O’Hara and bass player
David Goodier who had joined Tull in 2006 after Andrew Giddings and Jonathan Noyce departed the band.
Martin Barre's firing hit Tull fandom the hardest. Barre had been in Jethro Tull since late 1968 and was instrumental in crafting the band’s sound over the years with his jack-of-all-trades playing style that was sometimes bluesy and sometimes something completely different. (I am unsure how to describe his playing on "Magus Perde", for example.) Anderson has noted that he owns the legal entity
that is Jethro Tull, Inc. "As far as the name Jethro Tull in any musical context is concerned, for
many, many years, my company has owned that trademark and copyright in
the name". It being his company, I presume Barre was merely an employee of said entity. Hence,
Anderson’s ability to just hand the long-time guitarist his walking papers.
While I love listening to music, discussing it and writing about
it, the business side is largely a mystery to me.
Prior to Tull’s demise, Anderson had rounded out his solo band
with Scott Hammond on drums, Florian Opahle on guitar, and Ryan O’Donnell to
add additional vocals. They spent the autumn of 2011 recording Thick As a Brick
2 which was released in April of the following year. Two years later this
line-up recorded Homo Erraticus which came out in April 2014. In the foreword to Homo Erraticus Anderson
goes on at some length about his dislike of the name Jethro Tull and of
people thinking that it was his name. He wrote, "But I think I prefer,
in my twilight years, to use my own name..." Both were
(gasp!) concept albums and Anderson seemed to be in the midst of late career resurgence after having shed the agricultural appellation.
I say this as Tull spent its final decade or so essentially dead creatively, a prog zombie lumbering in 4/4 towards those final cymbal crashes of "Locomotive Breath". After touring in support of 1999’s J-Tull Dot Com, precious little new material
emerged. The Jethro Tull Christmas Album was released in 2003 but
featured only a few new tunes scattered amongst inferior re-recordings of Tull seasonal classics. Setlists of live shows had precious little variation and featured mainly older
material with songs from their last couple albums, the aforementioned Dot
Com and 1995’s Roots to Branches, largely ignored. Concerts were
dominated by songs that predated Anderson’s throat problems of 1985 and so you
had Ian Anderson trying to adapt the twisty, soaring
vocals of his 20-something self to his 50-something vocal chords. Some songs made the transition well while others suffered from a lack of vocal punch.
As the aughts progressed, new songs would trickle in here
and there. In 2007 “The Donkey and the Drum” began to be played as did “Birnam
Wood to Dunsinane”. Neither song would get recorded, to my knowledge. In 2009, “Tea
With the Princess” and “A Change of Horses” appeared. The former would
disappear into obscurity while the latter would end up on TAAB2.
Starting in 2010, Anderson would move most of the new songs
over to his solo shows leaving Tull to mindlessly plunder its back catalogue, although “A
Change of Horses” was played by the band nearly to the bitter end. Solo gigs saw the introduction
of a couple more new songs, “Adrift and Dumbfounded” and “That F***ing Tune”,
a.k.a. – “Overture”. Both would end up on TAAB2 with the latter being
retitled “Pebbles Instrumental”.
With TAAB2 and Home Erraticus, I was resigned
to there not being a Jethro Tull anymore. I like those albums quite a bit,
although I recognize their flaws. Anderson proved he could still turn a phrase and his humorous, more lighthearted moments sat comfortably next to the more serious ones. And I find
the lyrical themes interesting. He was still writing wonderful music as each
album is packed with great melodies and energetic playing. There’s no shortage
of flute and we get a fair amount of accordion to boot.
My gripe is their mixes. I find these album to have something of a flat sound with little punch to my ears and the songs often times
could use a little grittiness. The music sounds too clean. Also, there is a bit too much space between the instruments giving an ambience that feels a little too ordered, a little too calculated. What’s so odd about
this is that Anderson was having Steve Wilson remix most of Tull’s back
catalogue and praised his sonic arranging abilities to add to old
Tull some of the qualities that are missing here. Probably because of this, Florian Opahle’s
guitar never really comes alive for me. It deserved to be as brash as Martin
Barre’s playing.
As I said, I like TAAB2 and Homo Erraticus. They were not
listened to once and promptly set on my shelf to gather dust and be forgotten.
And so I was happy last year to hear Ian Anderson announce that he was releasing
new music. I was shocked when he said it was to be a Jethro Tull album.
Dumbfounded, you might say. Anderson had, after all, declared, "without Martin
Barre, there would be no Jethro Tull."
My first taste of the new album, The Zealot Gene,
came in November when a video for “Shoshana Sleeping” went live on YouTube.
With a flute melody that is one of the catchiest of Anderson’s career, I took
to it instantly.
The day came and the full album became available on YouTube.
Before long I caught wind of many positive reviews, some of which favorably
compared it to Aqualung. Tull’s Twitter account was soon thanking fans
for the album’s high chart positions in multiple countries. I tried ordering it
from my local record shop - shameless plug ahead - MadCity Music, but they were unable to get their hands on a copy. (!!) I
guess it was doing well. The band’s website was sold out too. Luckily I found a
copy at the record label’s site.
Whether it was intentional, I don't know, but it's a funny bit of irony that Anderson decided to resurrect Jethro Tull with an album that finds lyrical inspiration from the Bible.
II. A New Day for Jethro Tull
Somewhere along the way Anderson made his peace with the Jethro Tull moniker. In an interview included with The Zealot Gene, he is asked why it's a Tull album and not a solo one. He answered that "more personal stuff" is designated solo material while the songs hashed out by the band in a room together become Tull music. "In retrospect," he offered, "TAAB2 and certainly Homo Erraticus qualified to be Tull albums by that definition. But it didn't seem like the moment..."
Solo or Tull, the line-up here is mostly the same one that's been with Anderson for a long time: O’Hara, Goodier, Hammond, and Opahle. Opahle left in 2019 after contributing to most of the songs with his replacement, Joe Parrish-James, playing on one song. As explained in the liner notes, work on the album started in 2017 but, due to other obligations, proceeded slowly. And then Covid struck. (Again, how Biblical.) When it became apparent the band would not be able to convene in the same room, Anderson collected parts from his remote bandmates and assembled the remaining songs along with his own contributions.
While the Bible provided inspiration for all of the songs, some of them leave the Biblical references behind and merely share thematic material. Just like TAAB2 and Homo Erraticus, The Zealot Gene is a concept album but, unlike its predecessors, it's a loose one. There is no single protagonist here nor a historical progression. Instead it uses the Bible as a lens for viewing human nature, generally with passions overflowing, if not in extremis. This is Anderson's most (Werner) Herzogian album in that respect.
(It looks like IA went the Phil Collins route for the cover.)
The album begins the with a deep, ominous sounding drone and a brief flourish of synth strings. Once you put together the lyrics, it's hard not to hear that drone as the rumble of a B-29 bomber, more specifically, the Enola Gay. The song, "Mrs. Tibbets", is about the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The plane was named after pilot Paul Tibbets' mother. A few verses of Genesis are noted as the inspiration and they, of course, tell of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
"Mrs. Tibbets" is, to my mind, a sequel to "Heavy Metals" from Homo Erraticus. That song noted humanity's tendency to build ever deadlier weapons to express our anger culminating in the atomic bomb. The band is in fine form here with Hammond and Goodier laying down an insistent beat for Anderson's tale. O'Hara adds keyboards of all sorts as Opahle's muscular guitar adds an edge in contrast to the dramatic synths. In classic Tull style, flute drags the songs from tempo to tempo, verse to bridge, and back again.
This is followed by "Jacob's Tales" which delves into sibling rivalry a la Jacob and Esau. This is more of an acoustic affair with Anderson's guitar and a long lost harmonica providing the backdrop. When was the last time there was any harmonica on a Tull album? Too Old To Rock’n’Roll: Too Young to Die!? A little mandolin briefly embellishes the spare arrangement.
As I noted above, some reviews of this album made comparisons to Aqualung and I immediately thought of "My God" upon hearing "Mine Is the Mountain" with its opening piano notes that are somber and slightly threatening, just like its cousin from 1971. There is some nice piano-flute interplay and I love how Hammond's fills intercede.
Less than two weeks before the album was released, a video for the title track appeared. It reminded me of something philospher E.M. Cioran once wrote: "I feel safer with a Pyrrho than with a Saint Paul, for a jesting wisdom is gentler than an unbridled sanctity." Opahle has some
crunchy
riffs in there which sound heavier than anything on TAAB2 or Home
Erraticus. They're warranted as Anderson warns against figures like Donald Trump, demagogues who pander to hate and get people at each other's throats both on- and offline.
"Shoshana Sleeping" finds erotic inspiration in the Song of Solomon for such evocative lines as "Fingers tremble, trace the line/from nape to sacrum down the spine". Hammond shines here as his solo drums open the song before he starts pounding out the beat. I love that he hits an open hi-hat as it gives the song something of a ragged, slightly out of control feel. Opahle's playing is admirably restrained as Anderson sets the upbeat tone with one of his best flute melodies. Full stop. This is classic Tull.
This is followed up by another single, "Sad City Sisters", which was released on YouTube in what is
surely of
one the most unsettling, if not downright disturbing, videos to ever feature a
hand
puppet. An acoustic ditty with yet another great melody, it features the return of the pennywhistle,
which I
think has been M.I.A. since 1988. It is another one of those observational songs from Anderson, concerning the young and their hedonistic ways. Some tasteful accordion here chases the flute and the mandolin returns for a wonderfully folky outro.
"Barren Beth, Wild Desert John" again hints at Aqualung with a grinding guitar riff that evokes "Cross-Eyed Mary" and the way Anderson's flute hands off soloing duties to Opahle. Another full band songs follows, "The Betrayal of Joshua Kynde". Some lead piano lines from O'Hara are adorned by guitar as Anderson recounts the misdeeds of Judas Iscariot.
The gentlest moments on the album are found on "Where Did Saturday Go?", with its minimal instrumentation. Mainly acoustic guitar that I found reminiscent of 1975's "Requiem" and bass, there's the obligatory flute embellishments as impressionistic lyrics evoke the preparations of Jesus' body. This is followed by the tender verses of "Three Loves, Three". The choruses pick up the pace a bit as Anderson notes the different passions aroused by the different kinds of love. Another wonderful acoustic piece.
It flows directly into the album's penultimate tune, "In Brief Visitation" with the sacrifice of Jesus providing the lyrical backdrop here. A beautiful acoustic guitar is joined by unobtrusive but exceedingly tasteful piano and electric guitar, Parrish-James' lone contribution. The chorus is slightly plaintive and genuinely affecting. Just beautiful. It evokes the emotions that "At Last Forever" tried to but could not back in 1995.
The album finishes with another full band tune, "The Fisherman of Ephesus", a mediation on survivor's guilt. It alternates between heavier sections that perhaps illustrate the torment and softer ones with an elegiac feel. A fitting way to bring things to a close.
The Zealot Gene is a strong album which conclusively demonstrates that Ian Anderson is not a spent force creatively. Whether Martin Barre's absence disqualifies it as a "true" Jethro Tull album is really a dead end. This album is full of wonderfully melodic songs with the trademark Tull twists and turns. Anderson's flute seems a little less clean here and I think John O’Hara came into his own. He doesn't sound like he's struggling to carve out space for his parts but rather he is taking it as his own.
While the mixing problems were, perhaps, not completely overcome, they are mostly in the past. Everything seems to be a little more forward in the mix without quite so much space between the instruments. The album just sounds more naturally vivacious, although I still feel the electric guitar could have used a little more punch at times.
The final comparison to Aqualung, for me, anyway, is the cadence of alternating acoustic songs with the heavier, full band efforts. It'd be interesting to know how the album would have turned out had Covid never reared its ugly head. Fewer acoustic songs? We'll never know.
There are instances where songs would have benefited from Anderson having a more powerful voice as it's a bit anemic, at times. For example, there are moments in "Mrs. Tibbets" where he struggles to keep up with the music's hectic pace. There are also a couple instances where songs seem to end suddenly, as if the outro was tacked on at the last minute. My ears tell me that there was more to say in "Barren Beth, Wild Desert John", that the flute was going to go somewhere interesting before the songs crashes to a close.
The biggest surprise for me was the trio of softer, more acoustic songs towards the end: "Where Did Saturday Go?", "Three Loves, Three", and "In Brief Visitation". Delicate and affecting, but never maudlin, they contain some of the most beautiful music of Anderson's career.
The Zealot Gene is a real gem and was great way to start 2022.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
