Search - Jethro Tull :: Crest of a Knave

Nel Mezzo del cammin de nostra vita

W. A. Baurle | Arizona, USA | 03/06/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The more Tull reviews I read the more I'm convinced of how futile the whole enterprise is. The one thing that is undoubtedly true is that music appreciation is a subjective matter and the stupidest thing to do is hold our fellow listeners in suspicion or contempt simply because certain sounds cause vastly different reactions in them than they do in us. In this spirit I approach Crest of a Knave, and in particular this re-mastered edition. To echo what someone else mentioned in reference to these Tull re-vampings, simply raising lows and highs doesn't make for a better sound. Through most of these tracks the kick drum is over-bearing and thumping, and the cymbals are hissy. It's been a long time since I heard my vinyl copy of this - which went missing several years ago - and I never owned it on CD, but I don't remember having such impressions before. Enough about that, on to the music.





I'm often surprised, even baffled, by the disparate opinions of my fellow Tull fans, but I have to remind myself that my opinions are probably stranger than most. For instance, while I like Budapest well enough, I don't think it stands head and shoulders above the average Tull song. I find it sparse and far too lengthy, and never mind who it sounds like. There are better songs on this album. One of the songs not included on the original LP, but which did appear on the CD version, which strikes me as something very fine is The Waking Edge. This is a country song. Not folk mind you, but country, as in American-style country and western. If you don't agree, go back and have another listen, particularly to the chorus. You'll have to skip the lengthy intro which runs to a minute and a half, and which, quite frankly, is an example of the kind of superfluous musical foreplay which makes a lot of progressive rock music intolerable to me. At 3:42 there's a beautiful solo, on bass guitar of all things. Not because it's a country song, and therefore highly unusual for Tull, but because it's a good song plain and simple, I think it's one of the highlights of the album.





Steel Monkey is a solid rock song, full of energy and muscular keyboards with Martin's false harmonics, reminiscent of ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, sprinkled all through-out. Jump Start and Farm on the Freeway are both strong tracks, particularly for the flute and guitar breaks which fill out both songs and in which Ian and Martin display the musical chemistry that makes them one of the most entertaining duos in rock music. Said She Was a Dancer is simlar to The Waking Edge in that it's country-fied, wistful, and laid-back. It includes some of Martin's best guitar work and shows that he is equally adept at both a heavy, distorted sound as well as one which is perfectly clean.





One of the regretable things about CDs is that you have the judge the whole album as a single unit from beginning to end. With records you had the album split into two sides and the artist was compelled by necessity to make each side function as a thing-unto-itself, and subsequently you had some sort of symmetry, or asymmetry, between the two, some sort of co-dependence or relation. The first side of Crest, on vinyl, ending with Said She Was a Dancer, constitutes a very solid Tull side. On the other hand, side two was not nearly as satisfying or coherent. You had the soft and sprawling Budapest followed by the decent but not terribly strong Mountain Men, and concluding with Raising Steam, perhaps the weakest track of the bunch. Not much of a consummation or climax, artistically speaking. The earlier CD version offered two more songs than the LP - Dogs in the Midwinter, The Waking Edge - and these tracks, although the former is not bad and the latter is excellent, even if they had been part of the LP's second side wouldn't have made side two as strong as side one. This was the last Tull album I ever owned on vinyl and maybe that's why I'm ruminating on this two-side issue.





At any rate there has always been something off kilter with Crest for me, and because of this I don't think it's absolutely top-shelf Tull, nor do I think it could have been. It's a new Ian Anderson vocal style for one thing. He doesn't sing on Crest as much as he speaks in tune, and he sounds like somebody else so often that it's actually a bit embarassing. One has to realize that he was about forty when Crest was recorded and one must face the fact that aging takes its toll on a person's voice, and particularly on a person who sings professionally. Getting down on a forty year-old man for not being able to belt it out like he did when he was twenty is like getting down on him for having a few gray hairs. For this reason I don't blame Ian for his more subdued style: I'm simply being honest when I say that it makes for a product which will inevitably be less magnificent than vintage Tull.





I also have to say that I like Part of the Machine more than any of the songs on Crest. The guitar and flute breaks are nothing short of brilliant. It's quintessential Tull, but unfortunately it can't be judged as an integral part of Crest of a Knave since it was never included on it. Had it been, it would have made Crest a better album."