I have to admit that I didn't expect this album, to be honest I wasn't even aware of its existence until a few months ago I just went to progarchives and I read "Thick As A Brick 2" and I was like "naaah it can't be, it must be some compilation album, or an homage from another band" or something like that, then I read Ian Anderson, and I was like "Oh my god, I think this is serious" and it was.
An entire new album created as the sequel of an influential and epic masterpiece is here, the sequel of Thick As A Brick, after 40 years, we have the sequel of this masterpiece, a real sequel in this year made by Ian Anderson, the brain and heart of Jethro Tull. What we have here is Thick As A Brick 2: What Ever Happened To Gerald Bostock? (not to confuse with Thick As A Brick Pt.2)
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="240"]
A web-blog, GENIUS![/caption]For those who are not familiar with Jethro Tull, Ian Anderson, Thick As A Brick or Gerald Bostock, I think I shall give a little background about this.
Thick As A Brick is a conceptual album that was released in 1972 by Jethro Tull. At 1972-1973 Progressive Rock was at the pick of its life, almost all of the greatest masterpiece of Prog-rock started to emerge these two years. Progressive Rock was in a wild state of evolution and one of the key characteristics of this evolution was the implementation of conceptual albums. Albums that in a way, told a story or dealt about a particular theme. A lot of conceptual albums started to emerge around that period during the Prog rock scene and Thick As A Brick emerge as a response or better yet, a parody of all the other conceptual albums that were around at the time.
Originally the concept of Thick As A Brick started as a joke, but the album quickly became a masterpiece and ironically one of the finest conceptual albums ever (despite being a joke or a parody of them).
The story of Thick As A Brick revolves around a little poet boy named Gerald Bostock, also known as "Little Milton". He enters in a poetry competition and he writes an enormous controversial epic poem called "Thick As A Brick". Of course he wins the competition, but at the last minute the judges decide to disqualify him, because of the controversial and offensive nature of the poem, plus when he attended to BBC-TV he "uttered a profanity". You can read the whole article about this in the cover of the album.
The album consists of only one epic song, lasting 43 minutes divided in two parts, and the lyrics that we hear in the song are the actual poem written by Bostock.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="380"]
Of course all of this is fiction and the true mastermind behind the story, the album and the poem is this man right over here[/caption]Of course the album it's a complete epic masterpiece but we are not here to talk about it, we are here to talk about its sequel.
And what can I say about it?
It's an extremely strong, solid and powerful album. I consider it a masterpiece but I guess the correct term it's actually an "Elitist Masterpiece". Why? Because this album it's only for lovers of Jethro Tull, Ian Anderson and 70's Progressive Rock and Folk Rock.
There's something special about this album, of course what he have here is not modern progressive rock, it's 70's Progressive Rock. A lot of modern bands try to create a 70's Progressive Rock album but in most cases there's something missing. In this case, of course, everything is right there and everything is right, but of course we are dealing with an elder veteran here.
Unlike it's predecessor, TAAB2 it's not only one song, the album consists in 17 short songs, but of course this album was meant to listen to it completely every time and not by song. If you do this you can start to visualize that the album it's pretty much just one big song as it's predecessor, and those 17 short songs are actually the 17 movements that this epic has.
The style and lyrics of this album are what you would expect from Ian Anderson, satirical, poetic, clever, highly romanticized (in a good way), dealing about trivial but also with deep meaningful aspects of life.
Ian Anderson in the flute it's magnificent as always and its voice hasn't changed a lot.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="312"]
Now let's get inside the album and the new story it tells:[/caption]The album starts with a slow version of the ending of Thick As A Brick Pt.1, setting right away that cool 70's feel, I'm not from that era, but I'm sure that if you were a Prog fan in the 70's and if you listen to this, you're going to feel nostalgic as crap. Then the album opens with a nice prog rock beat that transforms into an Electric/Acoustic hard song, really nice but now we get into the first progressive passage of this album, folkloric, bold, bad ass and beautiful at the same time.
In Might-Have-Beens the whole concept of the album it's explain. The album deals about the modern life of Gerald Bostock, now as a 48 old. The album talks about the 5 paths of life that he could have taken. In one life he is a greedy millionaire banker hated by many, in other life he is a veteran soldier of the Afghan War who is still traumatized by the experiences he lived over there, in another life he is a homosexual homeless bum, in another life he is an arrogant evangelist priests and in another one he is a simple common man, married who works in a store.
The album as a whole, flows in a magnificent rhythm, almost as the same rhythm of the original TAAB with beautiful acoustic passages, hard prog moments, permanent folksih atmosphere and even a little it of punk in some songs, the last five songs of the album are truly magnificent in every way.
The album it's an excellent piece of prog music. Of course, people don't consider it better than the original, but it's not meant to be. This album it's a phenomenal album on its own and despite that I know that it's not a masterpiece I consider it to be, because it remind me of all of the old masterpieces that it's predecessor made fun of.
This are some of my favorites songs (or shall I say movements) of the album.
Thanks for reading :)
0 comentarios:
Publicar un comentario