Ambitious is the blanket term you can throw at Jethro Tull’s early works. A two-song, forty-three-minute-long album that opens with “I really don’t mind if you sit this one out,” is an invitation to kick back with the band. Thick as a Brick must make good on the tone taken by Aqualung, it’s as simple a standard as that. It does that, but it also sounds like vindication for frontman and lyricist Ian Anderson, who disagreed with Aqualung being cited as a concept album. Thematically similar songs don’t necessarily, have a through line tying them all together. That’s the argument Jethro Tull makes on this tongue-in-cheek thrill ride. Thick as a Brick is a rarity. Monty Python would influence many musicians, but few managed to shake the twee sound their comedy was based in. Anderson manages to adapt that tone and the sentiment of those values well here, lyrically biting and a bit of a play up to the concept albums of the time.
Thick as a Brick finds the fine line between open mockery and clear respect for those who could bring together these long-running thematics in their work. Individual songs are smashed together with some subtle but assured links from what would have been track to track. You can hear the time signature changes, the little details which hear where one idea ends, and another begins. Tying those together rids Anderson and the band of this concept album tag, but instead throws them into the deep end of progressive rock. Crucial to whatever this is, progressive rock classic in the making or ridicule of newspaper critics praising Aqualung for the apparent wrong reasons, is variety. Thick as a Brick does well to spread its instrumental breaks out, and though there are some phenomenal moments, it never feels overloaded with one instrument. Hammond organ and acoustic guitar blurs brilliantly around the sixteen-minute mark, but there are, of course, musically impressive moments before and after it.
Part of the balance comes from the occasional interruption from Anderson, welcome as it is, with lyrics inspired by a letter he received from his wife while on tour. Expanding on that, providing some insight into Jethro Tull as a working unit, makes Thick as a Brick feel like a letter of response. Lighter instrumentals hide a seething lyrical strength, the sportsmen writing their Boy Scout Manual is a sudden and cutting piece, an enjoyable end to the first side of a two-part thrill. Clanging bells, infuriated drumming, Thick as a Brick has a latter side that stands out as an absolute spectacle. Instrumentally fascinating and losing its grip, ever so slightly, on the rage which guided the first half of the album. All the same, a very strong experience of progressive rock, outstanding.
Crucially, though, beyond the instrumental excess and the thrill Jethro Tull are capable of here, is they prove their point. Aqualung is just a collection of songs, have it your way, Anderson. Projecting a link between the tracks is merely the mistake of those listening in, meaning cannot change over time. Thick as a Brick is built on the suggestion that the artistic intent of the piece at the time is what will remain, irrespective of what an artist may later realise about it. Brett Anderson of Suede is often keen to describe new meanings picked out in his songs because the subconscious mind will always be at play on an album and may never reveal another reading to its creator. Thick as a Brick is as clearly intended for those who dared to push Aqualung a little bit further as can be. There is no way to misread it, and that’s what Anderson wants from his music: clarity.
