Jethro Tull: Songs from the Wood (1977)
Never has an album more directly and more perfectly issued its mission statement from the outset.
Like the sound of an old English street herald, Ian Anderson’s a cappella voice opens Jethro Tull’s Songs from the Wood with a friendly hail:
Let me bring you songs from the wood
To make you feel much better than you could know…
And indeed what follows is a genre-birthing masterpiece blending British folk and progressive rock into something that could be fairly termed Elizabethan Rock–surely making fans of both folk and prog feel better than they could know.
Even many serious Tull fans feel that by 1976 and Too Old to Rock and Roll, Too Young to Die, things had grown a bit stale. Actually, taken as a batch of songs, and featuring as it did the guitar work of Martin Barre, it was a rather nice record.
But as a conceptual work about an aging rock star, coming at the height of the punk movement, Too Old… may have put Anderson and the band on the wrong side of Cool Street.
Having met, and produced albums by, English folk rock musicians, and having himself recently moved to the countryside, Anderson was inspired to take Tull in a fresh direction.
And as it turns out, the solution to Tull’s music beginning to sound old may have been to make it sound really old. Like, centuries old.
Let me bring you all things refined
galliards and lute songs served in chilling ale…
No one has electrified British folk more credibly with original compositions than Jethro Tull did on Songs from the Wood. It’s unique even within the band’s catalogue. What Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span did in plugging ancient songs into rock band arrangements was amazing. But the songs here aren’t based on centuries-old verse or inspired by particular traditional folk songs. This is all from Ian Anderson’s imagination–like J.R,R, Tolkien creating his own mythology as a setting for his characters. The fact that Anderson isn’t borrowing or reworking old traditionals–combined with the quality of the songwriting–makes this all the more astonishing.
McCartney could write timeless melodies. Brian Wilson could write heavenly harmonies. Cohen and Dylan could write inspired lyrics. But perhaps no other songwriter but Ian Anderson could have given us Songs from the Wood, with its highly literate lyrical sensibilities, evocative settings, its tinge of escapism, and its fantastically complex arrangements, performed by one of the best band lineups ever assembled.
It’s a wonderful blend of the gentle acoustic and the hard rock, along with some lovely singing and harmonizing. At turns mirthful and morose, regal and bawdy, natural and supernatural. Elsewhere we’ve opined on how Prince was comparatively minor league compared to Anderson in terms of dirty-minded double entendre. “Hunting Girl” takes low-minded lust into highbrow territory and is a showcase for guitarist Barre.
A singer of these ageless times.
With kitchen prose and gutter rhymes…
Full disclosure: for decades now I’ve considered this my favorite album by any artist in any genre, and I’ve listened to it literally hundreds of times. And yet I still will hear detail in the arrangements for the first time. How many bands in the current era make rock music so complex, with so many overlapping layers, that you’ll come across musical Easter eggs decades and hundreds of listens later?
One caveat: Like most progressive rock, Songs from the Wood has an appeal that takes multiple listens to be assimilated. I didn’t love it at first. Let it repeat, marinate and sink in.
This is an album that richly rewards repeated listening.
Songs from the wood make you feel much better…
Listen to: “Songs from the Wood”
Listen to: “Jack-in-the-Green”
Listen to: “Cup of Wonder”
Listen to: “Hunting Girl”
Listen to: “Ring Out, Solstice Bells”
Listen to: “Velvet Green”
Listen to: “The Whistler”
Listen to: “Fire at Midnight”
See also: https://edcyphers.com/2012/11/18/songs-you-may-have-missed-242/
See also: https://edcyphers.com/2013/02/24/songs-you-may-have-missed-340/
See also: https://edcyphers.com/2025/03/30/songs-you-may-have-missed-772/
Every Moment Has A Song 