He’ll be 78 later this year, but with European tour dates ongoing and his third Tull album in under four years, Ian Anderson is on something of a later-years creative roll.
Anderson’s solo album scheduled for 2017 emerged as Jethro Tull’s The Zealot Gene in 2022. The following year’s RökFlöte made the British Top 20. While both albums missed both guitarist Martin Barre and a certain sparkle, neither gave serious cause for concern.
This time the Barre-shaped gap is filled by Jack Clark, a man just past his thirtieth birthday. For all the injection of new blood, though, such is Anderson’s dominance of this flute-heavy record that Clark has little opportunity to shine. The same could be said of the similarly airbrushed drummer Scott Hammond, keyboard player John O’Hara and bassist David Goodier. Indeed, while it’s a reminder of the intricate delights of Tull’s quieter moments, Curious Ruminant is an Ian Anderson solo album in all but name.
And the old man is on fine form on an album partly based on some old instrumental demos. The centrepiece is the 17-minute Drink From The Same Well, which began two decades ago as a collaboration between Anderson and then-keyboard player Andrew Giddings, whose original work has not been wholly exorcised. In the best folk tradition of several songs bunged together, there’s a slow flute opening, a more spritely (very traditional) flute middle, and, after eight minutes, lyrics concerning a Partridge-esque ‘sweet ladyboys’ and ‘phobic, drunken macho men’ which take us to a closing hoe-down. Rarely can you fault Anderson for effort, and he’s inspired here.
Elsewhere he’s typically wordy, whether mulling over Jerusalem in Over Jerusalem (wisely, it’s not wholly clear where he stands), or being vaguely ecological on Savannah Of Paddington Green. Yet he’s never sounded as kind as he does on the relatively rumbustious The Tipu House, a mostly lovely evocation of Barcelona community bustle: ‘Someone has to fix the plumbing, or at least give it a try.’ And like so many of his peers, Anderson is contemplating mortality, here on the acoustically backed spoken-word poem Interim Sleep, the most poignant he’s been in years.
Curious Ruminant will not sate anybody’s desire for a tub-thumping Tull album, but Anderson seems to be beyond that now. Instead his mind is overflowing with lyrical tangents and still capable of dispensing hooks, and he’s entering the final stages in fine fettle.
