JETHRO TULL

Ian Anderson talks about the band’s latest album Curious Ruminant, and says he’s more likely to get the itch to make more records than to get the itch to retire.

Words: James McNair

After 24 studio albums and almost 60 years with Jethro Tull, Ian Anderson’s legacy looks safe even before you factor in his not inconsiderable solo output. Tull’s latest album, Curious Ruminant, fulfils the contractual stipulations of their three-album deal with German prog label InsideOutMusic. But, unlike 2022’s The Zealot Gene and 2023’s RökFlöte, it’s not a concept album, and feels weightier, closer to home. “This is a record where you’ll see the words ‘I’ and ‘me’ more often than is usual in Jethro Tull lyrics,” Anderson confirms. “It’s not entirely introspective, but it is a more personal set of views, observations and feelings about various topics. I wanted to be a little more heart-on-sleeve.”

Those “various topics” include songs about audience and performer, about bereavement and avarice and betrayal. Curious Ruminant is rather special; a welcome return to the folky, yet heavy Tull sound that many of us first fell for back in the 70s. Does Anderson see the record as a milestone, too?

“Not really,” he says levelly. “It’s just a collection of songs, in the same way that Aqualung was a collection of songs.”

No fanfare, then, and no histrionics. Anderson is too long in the tooth for gushing self-promotion, even when he’s arguably made his best record in some time. Dressed in a countryman’s padded black gilet over a grey sweatshirt, he exudes pragmatism instead.

Deadlines get met, boxes get ticked, and if you happen to like his latest album, that’s good, too.

Although both Curious Ruminant’s opening song Puppet And The Puppet Master and the title track begins with a few seconds of melancholic piano, the album as a whole is a shape-shifting, folk rock tour de force. Its heavier elements are part-fired by the fine guitar work of relative newcomer Jack Clark, more of whom shortly. The prognoscenti will also doubtless salivate at the shifting moods and gears of Drink From The Same Well, which at 16-minutes-plus is the longest Jethro Tull song since 1975’s Baker St Muse.

“Yes. Or before that, Thick As A Brick [1972],” notes Anderson. “For me, this new record epitomises what Jethro Tull arrangements are like on a good day: dynamic and versatile. There are a lot of contrasts, too.”

11 JETHRO TULL

Curious Ruminant INSIDEOUTMUSIC

You wait 19 years for a Jethro Tull album, and three arrive (almost) at once. Curious Ruminant is the best of Tull’s late-career surge that began with 2022’s The Zealot Gene, and finds Ian Anderson confronting mortality head-on, urgency apparently driving him forward. Tull still sound like Tull, although fans of the original band would probably like more grunt, as the production is lightweight and sometimes fussy. The closing Interim Sleep, however, is poignant and rather beautiful in its simplicity.

FL Killer Track: Puppet And The

Regarding the album’s title, Curious Ruminant, Anderson explains that it refers to him and his ongoing thirst for knowledge, rather than any inquisitive, cud-chewing cow or sheep. “It goes back to my early teenage years,” he says. “I always enjoyed learning stuff outside of an English grammar school’s normal curriculum. I loved fantasy and surrealism, and I was a sponge when it came to the heady days of late-fifties and early-sixties science fiction. Before I got into music, that was what inspired me to be thoughtful. Maybe my ability to write songs was innate, but the sci-fi stuff couldn’t have done any harm. I think it sharpened the pencil, as it were. I still like to learn something new every day. I remain a curious ruminant. These days I have more time to cogitate.”