A Passion Play

Jethro Tull

SKU: 2564630775

Barcode: 825646307753

45.00 £45.00
  • Genre: Rock And Pop
  • Label: Rhino
  • Released Date: 31st July 2014
  • Buying Format:
    180g 1LP Gatefold Sleeve

Out of stock

Add to your Wishlist

Jethro Tull’s second album-length composition, A Passion Play is very different from and not quite as successful as Thick as a Brick. Ian Anderson utilizes reams of biblical (and biblical-sounding) references, interwoven with modern language, as a sort of a rock equivalent to T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. As with most progressive rock, the words seem important and profound, but their meaning is anyone’s guess (“The ice-cream lady wet her drawers, to see you in the Passion Play…”), with Anderson as a dour but engaging singer/sage (who, at least at one point, seems to take on the role of a fallen angel). It helps to be aware of the framing story, about a newly deceased man called to review his life at the portals of heaven, who realizes that life on Earth is preferable to eternity in paradise. But the music puts it over successfully, a dazzling mix of old English folk and classical material, reshaped in electric rock terms. The band is at its peak form, sustaining the tension and anticipation of this album-length piece across 45 minutes, although the music runs out of inspiration about five minutes before it actually ends.

Artist
Genre
Label
Buying Options
Format , ,
Condition
Country

Track Listings

Side 1
1. Lifebeats /Prelude
2. The Silver Cord
3. Re-Assuring Tune
4. Memory Bank
5. Best Friends
6. Critique Oblique
7. Forest Dance #1
Side 2
1. The Story Of The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles
2. Forest Dance #2
3. The Foot Of Our Stairs (+ 2 extra verses found on the end of the multi-track reel)
4. Overseer Overture.
5. Flight From Lucifer
6. 10.08 to Paddington
7. Magus Perde
8. Epilogue

Share this

More from Jethro Tull

More from Rock And Pop