Review Summary: Tull...Tull never changes.
When you've been making music for over 50 years, you kind of find your groove and stick to it. It would be wrong to call Ian Anderson's new album Homo Erracticus adventurous because it sounds very much like a Jethro Tull album. Specifically, it sounds similar to Crest of a Knave with its heavier guitar distortion and Ian Anderson's lower pitched voice. However, that's not a bad thing at all. Part of the reason that Jethro Tull's popularity waned was because they deviated from a formula that clearly worked.
Jethro Tull fans need not fret. Even though the group is no more, Homo Erraticus is basically a Jethro Tull album only with no Martin Barre. In spite of the lack of Tull's long serving guitarist, the instrumentation is as strong as ever. Ian Anderson signature flute is always a welcome sound for Jethro Tull fans and he delivers some pretty superb flute solos and melodies. However, that isn’t to say that he is only star of the show on the instrumental front. The Thick As A Brick 2 lineup returns for this album and they are even better on this album than they were on the previous one. Guitarist Florian Ophale delivers solos and fills that could give Martin Barre a run for his money. The opening track “Doggerland” and “After These Wars” are the most notable instances of some exceptional guitar work. Meanwhile, John O’Hara’s keys form the backbone of several melodies and they do not disappoint. Wrapped together by a solid if unremarkable rhythm section, Homo Erraticus makes for one of Ian Anderson’s best composed albums in a long time.
Even some of the weaker tracks on the album are still supported by strong melodies that make the album an entertaining listen from beginning to end. Ian Anderson’s voice is also still up to par showing that while he might be aging, Anderson still has preserved his unique voice that made Jethro Tull such a standout in their prime. It’s a good thing that his vocals are still strong, they do good to cover some not so good lyrics.
The biggest stumbling block for Homo Erraticus is its lyrics. While they are not horrible or groan worthy, they unfortunately are not all that engaging. Homo Erraticus is a concept album that continues on the story of Gerald Bostock of Thick As a Brick and its sequel. Except is doesn’t, not really anyway. The concept is, according to the website, that the former child poet wrote the lyrics to the album after stumbling across a book that contains the complete history of England written by an amateur historian after a malarial fever dream that had him entering the lives of several figures in British history. The historian also received visions of the future that tell of how humanity will eventually run out of space and resources until an alien warning leads them to a brighter future.
If that concept sounded hard to follow, the don’t worry, it’s just as hard to follow within the lyrics itself. Given that it expects to cover the past, present, and future of the British Isles in 15 tracks with a 51 minute running, this gives the album a very compressed feeling. For the most part, the album hardly gives enough time for most of the events in history to develop, making the lyrics feel more like Ian Anderson is simply reading the cliff notes of an Encyclopaedia Britannica. The track “Enter the Uninvited” suffers the worst lyrically, as it essentially boils down to Ian Anderson singing a list of things that are not entirely related to the overall topic of the song. However, Ian Anderson has always approached lyrics with his tongue firmly in cheek so it’s not expected of the audience to take the lyrics too seriously. However, compared to some of Anderson’s previous outings, even his last album Thick As a Brick 2, it’s clear that this is not his best work lyrically.
Even with this compressed feeling lyrically, the album somehow still manages to have filler. The tracks “Heavy Metals “, “In For a Pound”, and “Per Errationes Ad Astra” are all less than two minutes long and have such little substance that they feel wholly unnecessary to the album as a whole. “Tripudium Ad Bellum”, while a strong instrumental, seems to cut off before it can really get going and it ends up feeling that it could be part of the next track “After These Wars.”
While these faults keep the album from being truly great, they do not drag the album into mediocrity. When the album’s on point, it delivers some very fine tracks. The aforementioned “After These Wars” is probably one of the most focused tracks lyrically, about (obviously) post World War England, as well as having a fantastic guitar solo that really makes it one of the highlights. The opener “Doggerland” is also amazing with a classic Jethro Tull blend of acoustic and electric guitar and some fancy organ work to satisfy key enthusiasts like me. The real standout track is “Puer Ferox Adventus” which harkens back to Jethro Tull in the early seventies as it rolls along at a slow pace, delivering an entertaining interpretation on the spread of Christianity throughout England with a killer vocal performance from Ian Anderson.
In spite of some flaws, the good of Homo Erraticus overshadows the bad to make an entertaining album for Jethro Tull fans. It might not try anything terribly new, but that does not detract from the quality. We might not have any new Jethro Tull albums, but Homo Erraticus shows that Ian Anderson is just fine all on his own.
