Jethro Tull War Child (the 40th Anniversary Edition) 2cd (2025)]

Jethro Tull's 11th studio album, Heavy Horses, is one of their prettier records, a veritable celebration of English folk music chock-full of gorgeous melodies, briskly played acoustic guitars and mandolins, and Ian Anderson's lilting flute backed by the group in top form. This record is a fairly close cousin to 1977's Songs from the Wood – and was ultimately the hinge-piece and first of an ecologically themed trilogy which concluded with 1979's Stormwatch – except that its songs are decidedly more passionate, delivered with a rough, robust energy that much of Tull's work since Thick as a Brick had been missing. In its lustiness it arguably surpasses even Aqualung. "No Lullaby" is the signature heavy riff song, a concert version of which opened Bursting Out: Jethro Tull Live recorded that same year. Anderson sings it – and everything else here – with tremendous intensity, as though these might be the last lines he ever gets to voice.

Jethro Tull - War Child (1974) {Japan Mini LP Edition 2003, TOCP-67182}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC+CUE+LOG -> 428 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 158 Mb | Artwork (web)
© 2003 Toshiba-EMI / Chrysalis | TOCP-67182
Rock / Prog Rock / Art Rock

Two years on from the conceptual innovations of THICK AS A BRICK, Tull had learned how to crystallize the creativity of that prog-rock masterpiece and incorporate it into more traditional song structures. Thus, the songs here are full of daunting time signatures and dazzling feats of instrumental derring-do, but all in the context of shorter, more concise composition. There's also a darker edge to things here, as introduced by the tumultuous title cut.

"War Child"'s achievement is in its music: some of the richest in recent memory, the arrangements are consistently stunning in their execution, courting excess but impossibly balanced by admirable dexterity. Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that "Skating On The Thin Ice of The New Day" is one of my favorite songs (a musical epiphany, if you will).

Minstrel in the Gallery was Tull's most artistically successful and elaborately produced album since Thick as a Brick and harkened back to that album with the inclusion of a 17-minute extended piece ("Baker Street Muse"). Although English folk elements abound, this is really a hard rock showcase on a par with – and perhaps even more aggressive than – anything on Aqualung. The title track is a superb showcase for the group, freely mixing folk melodies, lilting flute passages, and archaic, pre-Elizabethan feel, and the fiercest electric rock in the group's history – parts of it do recall phrases from A Passion Play, but all of it is more successful than anything on War Child.

War Child is the seventh studio album by Jethro Tull, released in October 1974.
Originally meant to accompany a film project (the album was planned as a double-album set), it was reinstated as a ten-song, single-length rock album after failed attempts to find a major movie studio to finance the film.
The "War Child" movie was written as a metaphysical black comedy concerning a teenage girl in the afterlife, meeting characters based on God, St. Peter and Lucifer portrayed as if shrewd businessmen. Notable British actor Leonard Rossiter was to have been featured, Margot Fonteyn was to have choreographed, while Monty Python veteran John Cleese was pencilled in as a "humour consultant".

Minstrel in the Gallery was Tull's most artistically successful and elaborately produced album since Thick as a Brick and harkened back to that album with the inclusion of a 17-minute extended piece ("Baker Street Muse"). Although English folk elements abound, this is really a hard rock showcase on a par with – and perhaps even more aggressive than – anything on Aqualung. The title track is a superb showcase for the group, freely mixing folk melodies, lilting flute passages, and archaic, pre-Elizabethan feel, and the fiercest electric rock in the group's history – parts of it do recall phrases from A Passion Play, but all of it is more successful than anything on War Child.