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Aqualung

Jethro Tull

Group Rating: 5
Global Rating: 3.43
Global Reviews

The Eetcafé Club Reviews

Jethro Tull were the last of the big prog bands I discovered for myself. I’d already been familiar with the other big bands – Yes, Genesis, King Crimson and ELP, even Van der Graaf Generator and Gentle Giant – since I was a pre-teen, thanks to my older siblings; I only really got to know Tull in the late 1980s; before that, I’d only heard their hits on the radio. “Aqualung” was the first proper studio album of theirs that I heard, and to this day I find this very distinctive blend of folk rock, blues rock, hard rock and progressive rock utterly captivating. The album also defines the band’s musical framework: acoustic folk numbers, riff-driven hard rock passages, bluesy solos and complexly arranged, unusually structured prog numbers featuring classical and jazz quotes, often with witty, biting lyrics. And although the album sounds hopelessly old-fashioned, it is at the same time timeless, because it has, in any case, fallen out of time since its release.

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