#725 Jethro Tull - Stand Up

This first Jethro Tull album is something of a missing link: still decidedly in the tradition of the blue-influenced heavy rockers like Cream and Jeff Beck, but with the seeds of the sound that would become prog. The strange instrumentation (primarily that famous flute), the strange tones, the hitched rhythms, the extravagant themes and delivery; they all add a twist to that basic sound that was swirling around these largely-pre-psychadelia times, keeping the soaring vocals and rollicking bass that make it worth listening to. The epic-length songs and narratives would come later, but even now Jethro Tull show themselves as a band willing to warp convention.

There's something about this that holds this album back from greatness though, that keeps it smoldering but not igniting. Maybe it's Ian Anderson's too-typical vocals, the thinness of the mix, or the passable-but-unremarkable guitar work, but there's better ideas here than execution 3.5/5