record reviews

May 13, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

IAN ANDERSON OF JETHRO TULL

Album: “Thick as a Brick 2” (Chrysalis)

Grade: A

OK, it won me over. After several listenings, some alongside Jethro Tull’s original, famous/notorious 1972 smash “Thick as a Brick” (40 years old this year), I gotta tell ya and no kiddin’: This is a fine album, more than worthy of its namesake. “TAAB2” revisits Gerald Bostock, the little boy who supposedly wrote the impenetrable lyrics for the original “TAAB.” The sequel is a direct, coherent, sustained meditation on a worthwhile theme: fate, and possible lives taken or not. The tracks are uniformly interesting and moving, with (or despite?) Anderson’s trademark neck-breaking segues among folk, heavy rock, ballad and Asian modalism. None of the other old Tulls are here, but Anderson has assembled a team of blindingly talented players. The music is tight, biting, live-in-studio (as the original was!), and Anderson is a better flutist than ever. And lyricist. To call his tunes “busy” is like saying, “There are many tuna,” but it’s a thrill ride. Wait for the package, coming later this year, of “TAAB2” with “TAAB” — but know this is one of Anderson/Tull’s better albums, all sneering energy and humane concern. Highpoint: the exquisite, unearthly “Changing Horses,” among his best single tracks ever.

— John Timpane, Philadelphia Inquirer

CAROLE KING

“The Legendary Demos” (Hear Music)

Grade: A

It’s a Carole King moment. Her memoir, “A Natural Woman,” is out, and here is “The Legendary Demos,” fascinating. And too short. King, a founder of the singer/songwriter movement, is one of the few 1960s pop tunewrights to become true performance royalty. Here’s a window on that progress: 13 demos (in various arrangements, from full-on band to hasty guitar and voice) of tunes she and various lyricists (most often, then-husband Gerry Goffin) wrote for the Shirelles, the Everlys, Bobby Vee, and the Righteous Brothers. It’s a mere taste of the 50 hit tunes King shoveled into the marketplace in the 1960s. They’re not in chronological order, but they tell a story. A couple could have been hits on their own. King leads a full, driving band on “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” without the Beatlesque Monkees gallop into the reverb, but nicely ’60s in its tart satire on the ’burbs. I admire her brave singing on “For Once in My Life,” written for the Righteous Brothers as a follow-up to “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling”; it’s emotionally naked, better than the Brothers’ version. Often channeling the target artist in her singing, King can do both the bubbly girl-group thing and the soul thing: Here is one woman who could hear gospel. That comes through in the heartfelt demo of “[You Make Me Feel Like a] Natural Woman,” which Aretha Franklin made her own in 1967. (Amazing how well Goffin could write lyrics that worked for female singers.) When we come to demos for the watershed album “Tapestry” (which postdates King’s 1968 divorce from Goffin), the advance is breathtaking: She grew up and found her style. “It’s Too Late” is great, “Beautiful” perky and encouraging, “Way Over Yonder” even more likable than the album version, and “You’ve Got a Friend” indelible.

— John Timpane, Philadelphia Inquirer