The HiFi Hobbyist Top Five Jethro Tull Albums - Ranked!

Jethro Tull have been producing music since 1968, and therefore selecting 5 favourite Jethro Tull albums for this podcast is a difficult task.

This week's podcast is the Hifi Hobbyist's attempt to select a Top Five Jethro Tull albums. Only five in the list in order to try to explore the merits of each title in some detai,l particularly with reference to the sound quality of each album. The Jethro Tull catalogue has been well served by a series of remixes by Steve Wilson, often on the 40th anniversary of the original release. Many of Jethro Tull’s early albums, in particula,r push the boundaries of what was then technically possible, and this perhaps explains why the quality of some of the original releases was less than ideal.

In selecting my favourite 5 albums, I have taken into account that some of the Jethro Tull albums can be seen as companion pieces. Thus, a Passion Play and a Thick as a Brick both represent concept albums and share a common tongue-in-cheek approach. Heavy Horses and Songs from the Wood represent a more rural and folksy approach to music. Stormwatch whilst musically similar to Heavy Horses and Songs from the Wood looks forward lyrically to the more apocalyptic themes of A.

Crest of a Knave and Rock Island represent a harder rock sound, whilst Minstrel in the Gallery and Too old to Rock'n'Roll, Too Young to Die can be seen as concept albums based around relatively short individual tracks.

In order to reduce my options, I elected to set the criteria that no two albums that represent companion pieces could appear in my top five. The selection is based on musical and lyrical quality, rather than the sound quality of the original releases, but as this is a hifi hobbyist podcast, we will certainly discuss sound quality, especially in relation to the Steve Wilson remixes where available.

As usual, we cannot use Tull’s music for copyright reasons, so the music featured is a version of Bourrée in E minor from J.S. Bach's Lute Suite in E minor, BWV 996. This is the piece that inspired Jethro Tull’s famous Bourrée track when Ian Anderson heard Martin Barre play it on his guitar. Our version is by Jakob Lindberg, and the recording is in the public domain.