The Enthusiastic Exegesis

I. Solo Schismaticus

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.

(Photo by Ros O'Gorman)

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.