Jethro Tull – Curious Ruminant Review

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Flute rock is back with a bang as Jethro Tull hopes to make good on Curious Ruminant. Their Valhalla-themed rock blowout, RökFlöte was an underwhelming piece made only for die-hard fans of the band. Some hard graft in the studio is starting to bleed from the Jethro Tull-shaped stone, and it is a continuation of the relatively awkward jolts of instrumental uncertainty heard on their last outing. Curious Ruminant, their title track, should be the flagbearer for the qualities they hope to oversee. Ian Anderson continues with his flute-playing, spoken-word-like innovations. At least here, the medieval minstrel-like playing is backed by a sharp and heavy rock tone. Exceptionally spirited guitar work makes up for the inevitable, dawdling look back from Jethro Tull as Anderson uses his life so far as stock for reflective tones.  

Every artist of a certain age eventually finds it in them to look back, even if they had never done so before, like the Pet Shop Boys. Curious Ruminant at least holds onto the obtuse sense of self-questioning though name-dropping the likes of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud adds one of many disjointed layers to a song all about shortcomings and heroic victories found in Anderson’s past. The spoken-word delivery is not the problem, it remains a tremendous twilight years step for Anderson and the band, whose greatest strength now lies in the delivery. But when offering the relatively lax and uneventful lyrical pieces heard on Curious Ruminant, it is hard to get all too excited. Slick guitar work which may sound all too similar to those who are well-versed in Jethro Tull’s backlog serves either as a neat callback or a sign the band is running on fumes. Either way, there is a connection to the past.  

Curious Ruminant at least comes across as genuine – that is the major hurdle for a song banking on legacy more than anything unique to the band’s latest offerings. Instrumental work which builds on their progressive rock tones is no surprise, and much of the back-and-forth of flute, organ, and guitar, is neatly pieced together. At its best, the showy instrumentals should add a memorable backdrop to the lyrical shifts, though when Anderson is stuck on these maudlin-like tones it is hard to cut through with much care for his William Shakespeare-like tense and constant reliance on lifting the ideas, or rather the suggestions of an idea, from philosophers and thinkers.  

Anderson neither adds to the philosophy of René Descartes or Jung heard within, nor does he reflect on their teachings through song. They are dropped in as name references to a well-read life. Curious Ruminant has the curiosity but not the well-thought conclusions Anderson is grasping for. He may have read up on those historic philosophers but his interpretations throughout Curious Ruminant amount to little more than quotes, quality instrumentals, and questionably loose readings of their prose. Anderson is a man who would love to live in The Lord of the Rings but, struggling to adjust to the real world, is fighting the bright lights of iPad screens and jet planes with pickle soup and fence-sitting. That latter bit, waiting for the wind to knock him to one side of the argument or the other, is a shy and cowardly place to sit when the instrumentals on Curious Ruminant, at times, roar through with a conviction Anderson’s lyrical work just does not have.