Label politics prevented Jethro Tull’s 1980 album A being Ian Anderson’s solo debut, but the solo seed had been sown. In ’83 the near-electro Walk Into Light shed the Tull straitjacket, and he ran a concurrent solo career until 2014’s Homo Erraticus. The 10-vinyl 8314 comprises all six solo albums, plus Roaming In The Gloaming, a 12-track collection of pristine, previously unreleased, chat-free live recordings from 1995 to 2007. There’s a book, too.
The earlier albums are the work of one who doesn’t care – not about the music, of course, but about the reaction to it. Without a template to follow or a fan base’s expectations to meet, he took flight.
If Walk Into Light had surprised anyone expecting rockily rustic, 1995’s Divinities: Twelve Dances With God was a flute-led instrumental trip around the world’s musics. Five years later, the rather lovely The Secret Language Of Birds touched on bucolic but rueful folk. Having proved his point, from there the line between Anderson and Tull began to blur, and 2003’s Rupi’s Dance was more Tull-like than that year’s The Jethro Tull Christmas Album.
- “He’ll be 78 this year, but Ian Anderson is on something of a later-years creative roll.”: Jethro Tull lean into the twilight on inspired and poignant 24th album Curious Ruminant
- “The rustic feel of Songs From The Wood or Heavy Horses… a sense of urgency still surrounds the band”: Jethro Tull’s Curious Ruminant
In 2012, Thick As A Brick 2 really ought to have been a Tull album, as it focused the original’s eight-year-old genius as a 48-year-old. That saga was satisfactorily concluded on Homo Erraticus. The live material fleshes out the picture, but what remains, mostly, is the sound of a man pushing his own boundaries and having an absolute ball.
