Minstrel In The Gallery - JETHRO TULL***

Minstrel In The Gallery/Cold Wind To Valhalla/Black Satin Dancer/Requiem/One White Duck-Nothing At All/Baker Street Muse/Grace

Minstrel In The Gallery was alas another mediocre album from Jethro Tull, a group who were capable of much better. This was a phenomenon which affected many artists from this period onwards. (US:7 UK:20)

“Bringing back the acoustic side of their sound, adding an orchestra to some tracks (but to little benefit), taking on a mildly medieval tone and tossing in a nicely structured epic, Baker Street Muse, for good measure, Tull go a long way towards reassuring the listener that they were still capable of producing a decent album.”

“There is a lot of depth on the album, particularly the Baker Street Muse song-cycle, with its bawdy, sometimes touching and other times raucous wordplay. And once again, we find the exquisite acoustic guitar work of Anderson. Many fans consider the flute as the defining instrument in a Tull composition, but it is really the interplay of Martin Barre's electric and Ian Anderson's acoustic guitars. The variation of the two sounds, the hard and the soft, is what makes Tull albums truly unique.”

“I really don't like this recording very much, as it seems to be contrived,. Over the years Jethro Tull made some very beautiful music, but this is mediocre at best and for me personally, borderline bad.”

“Unfortunately, it's not one of their better progressive pieces. You can't beat the title track, but a number of the other songs are dull to forgettable.”

“Minstrel In The Gallery was their most folk-rock oriented album. Some of their previous albums had some folk influence here and there but this album was their first with a clear folk rock sound mixed with progressive rock.”

“There are some interesting tracks but it somehow feels incomplete and missing something. That's something is soul. It seems that Ian Anderson recorded much of the album alone in the studio. The remaining parts were added later, the orchestration and the other band parts such as guitar, bass, drums. It almost feels like the other band members were being employed as session musicians, on the same level as the orchestra. The result, despite the occasional highs, leaves me cold.”