A passion Play
Following quickly on the heels of their career-definingAqualungandThick as a Brick,Ian Anderson's Jethro Tull demonstrated that their musical and thematic ambitions were as muscular as ever on 1973'sPassion Play. But ifThickwas a bit tongue in cheek about its conceptual conceits,Passionwas a dizzying example of the prog-rock era's overweening musical aspirations at their zenith. Anderson now sums up it its obtuse, theater-as-metaphor libretto as "the theme of post-death meanderings in another world," but the sheer propulsive tension of Tull's sprawling musical interplay insures its folk-rooted baroque and roll a tight orbit around this mortal coil for nearly the album's entirety.--Jerry McCulley