The most recent album by English progressive rock band Jethro Tull is an old-school concept album based on Old Norse mythology. Released in April, RökFlöte didn’t make much of a splash on the Pagan and Heathen scene. It was only due to a passing mention on Twitter a week or so ago that I even knew of its release.
Is it really a Jethro Tull album, though? What exactly is the band Jethro Tull, these days?
Thor poses with Jethro Tull’s Norse-inspired RökFlöte album [Photo by Karl E. H. Seigfried]
The band
Front man Ian Anderson is the only performer who has appeared with the band on all recordings issued since their debut in 1968. Guitarist Martin Barre first appeared on the band’s second album, Stand Up (1969), and continued on through The Jethro Tull Christmas Album (2003). Other band spots have been held by a variety of players over the decades, for a wide variety of tenure lengths.
Anderson and Barre, the two key members who defined the sound of the group across six decades, retired the Jethro Tull name and launched their respective solo bands in 2012.
With the original band’s 50th anniversary in 2017, Anderson quietly began rebranding his solo group as Jethro Tull. In the years after the split with Barre, the name morphed from the Ian Anderson Band to the Ian Anderson Touring Band to Ian Anderson and the Jethro Tull Band to simply Jethro Tull.
Aside from Anderson, the players on the new release have little connection to the band’s history. Keyboardist John O’Hara and bassist David Goodler overlapped with Barre only for the last four years of his 43 with the group. The rest joined in 2015 or later.
In the liner notes to his 2014 solo album Homo Erraticus, Anderson writes, “I prefer, in my twilight years, to use my own name, for the most part being composer of virtually all Tull songs and music since 1968.” Although using Tull branding, the new Norse album very much feels like it was written by Ian Anderson and recorded with an assortment of very qualified musicians-for-hire. It does not feel like a band in the way classic Tull did, whatever the compositional process was in the old days.
Jethro Tull is now in the same place that so many other English prog and prog-adjacent bands who rose to superstardom in the 1970s now find themselves: one member (sometimes two) from the group’s heyday soldiers on, releasing new music using the name of a band that used to be a band. Wishbone Ash has a serious touring schedule with only Andy Powell left. Pink Floyd released a new song last year featuring only Nick Mason from the original lineup and David Gilmour from the classic lineup. Deep Purple is still out there doing it, with only Ian Paice from the first version of the band plus Ian Gillan and Roger Glover from the second.
Yet time is a strange thing. Bob Skeat has played bass with Wishbone Ash for twenty-six years, a decade longer than founding member Martin Turner’s three stints with the band. Guy Pratt has played bass for Pink Floyd shows and recordings from 1987 through 2022, meaning his tenure in the band is more than twice as long as that of Roger Waters. Maybe most weirdly, Steve Morse of the Dixie Dregs – not founding member Ritchie Blackmore – is Deep Purple’s longest-serving lead guitarist.
The afterlife of titans from the glory days of classic rock goes on and on, even when there is only a single strand connecting the present incarnation back to the past.
The concept
In the first essay in the booklet accompanying RökFlöte, Anderson immediately dives into that swampy morass that seems to swallow so many English and American people who get interested in Norse mythology: the DNA ancestry test.
Whenever I’ve asked new students in my Norse classes for adults or new-to-Heathenry Heathens why they’re interested in this subject, maybe one-quarter to one-third begin their answer by saying, “The results of my DNA test…” Neo-völksich hate groups aren’t the only ones who obsess over genetics as a supposed determiner of religiosity, apparently. Maybe this mythology is so powerful that people want to claim it by birthright, or maybe twenty-first century folks are so against reading books that it takes DNA test results to get them to actually make it all the way through the Eddas.
Anderson next provides a brief summary of traditional scholarship on Norse religion in the Indo-European context and in relation to the Christian conversion of northern Europe. Much like the academic Hilda Ellis Davidson – possibly a source for what Anderson himself writes here – the rock musician takes pains to distance himself from modern Paganism, obliquely referring to “dark role play fascination,” comparing Norse and Hindu “too esoteric” polytheism unfavorably with the “overarching and pure simplicity” of Abrahamic monotheism, and insisting that he is “not here to promote the old Norse religion.” The repeated denunciations make an odd pairing with the insistence on genetic connection.
The album title RökFlöte is explained as a combination of the final element of the Old Norse Ragnarök, the modern German Flöte (“flute,” Anderson’s instrument and Tull’s defining sound), and a love for umlauts.
Most notably, Anderson provides clear explanations of his lyrics – a radical break with tradition for those of us who grew up in the pre-internet days, listening to prog rock on vinyl and 8-track cassette, trying to figure out what in the world Jon Anderson was singing about on old Yes albums. Not only does Ian Anderson briefly explain the Norse myth background for each track, he explains exactly what modern lyrical references the songs make.
These modern connections are literally highlighted by being printed in a different color from the mythological lyrics in the album booklet. In every song aside from the opening and closing tracks, Anderson sings three verses based on the myths followed by two verses connecting the old material to his own experiences. In consort with the plain explanations of the lyrical references, this formulaic song construction does much to undermine whatever mysteries may have been present in the material.
I’m all for connecting ancient mythology to modern life, for reading the myths so that they have meaning in our lived lives, but Anderson’s idiosyncratic interpretations aren’t always convincing. His portrait of Thor turns into a critique of Vladimir Putin’s aspirations for empire, and an intense portrayal of Fenrir shrinks into a description of Anderson’s own boutique Belgian shepherd dogs.
Definitively breaking with popular modern conceptions of Loki, Anderson links his fatal connection with Baldr to “the obsessive relationships” of Kenneth Halliwell with Joe Orton, Joe Dallesandro with Andy Warhol, George Dyer with Francis Bacon, and Travis Maldonado with Joe Exotic. Although Anderson has spoken out in support of gay rights after being picketed by the Westboro Baptist Church, setting a constructed “fatal attraction” of deadly homosexual obsession in a mythical context is both retrograde and disturbing.
The music
Anderson’s “Notes on the Making of the Album” explain how he composed the material alone, recorded demo versions alone, and supplied his sidemen with notes on “who should play what and where.” After the other musicians practiced their parts, songs were recorded two at a time, with one day of rehearsal and one day of recording for each pair. The music resulting from this process has a sense of claustrophobia, as if the musicians are struggling to break free from the compositions.
RökFlöte by Jethro Tull [Photo by Karl E. H. Seigfried]
“Voluspo” (i.e. Völuspá, “Prophecy of the Seeress,” the Poetic Edda’s opening poem) begins the album with sounds of heavy breathing probably meant to evoke the beginning of life in the mythic timeline but coming off as a bit pervy. Icelander Unnur Birna very seriously recites Old Icelandic verses from the poem, with a retro reverb effect kicking in to give her final words a jarringly processed sheen. Anderson then recites the same verses in English translation. All of this treads paths set down a half-century ago by the Icelandic poet and Ásatrúarfélagið (“Æsir Faith Fellowship”) founder Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson, who was well-known for chanting this material in rock contexts.
Similarly retro, the instrumental bits of this opening track show two major limitations of 1970s progressive rock.
First, the dedication to odd meter (counting in 5 or 7, for example, instead of the usual rock 4) and mixed meter (like grouping beats 3+3+4 instead of each group having the same count) gives the group a plodding sound. Moving away from the standard boom-chuck-boom-boom-chuck rock beat can be a liberating experience and lead to new rhythmical vistas, but this band falls into the old prog trap of having the entire group land on the first beat of every measure together – melody and accompaniment alike – so that any sense of forward motion is constantly stepped on by, in effect, the whole band yelling “ONE!” to begin each bar.
Second, the album’s approach to instrumental harmony is a relentless insistence on note-for-note parallel melodic harmonization of the dual-lead-guitar type parodied in a profanity-saturated scene in the 1984 rock mockumentary Spinal Tap (which also made fun of rock umlauts like those in the title RökFlöte). On this new album, the harmony tends to be flute-flute or flute-guitar, but the concept of a melodic instrumental line doubled at the interval of third, sixth, fourth, or fifth hasn’t progressed in the more than half-century since the twin-guitar explosion of the first track on the first Wishbone Ash album way back in 1970.
Also from RökFlöte’s opening track, there’s a sense of Anderson’s sidemen as hired guns instead of partners in music-making. Here and throughout the album, I felt frustrated on behalf of guitarist Joe Parrish-James. So often on so many tracks, he launches into a guitar solo with a concept far more modern than Anderson’s – understandable, given that he was born nearly fifty years after the bandleader – but, only a few notes in, his guitar line is immediately chained to a composed harmony part, and any flight of creativity is immediately grounded. I found myself repeatedly yelling, “Let the dude play!”
“Ginnungagap,” on the coming into existence of the proto-giant Ymir, opens with some excellent composed flute work by Anderson and, appropriately enough, is reminiscent of the heavier side of 1970s prog and fusion.
“Allfather,” an ode to Odin, somehow misses the opportunity to rock out in 9/4 in honor of the god’s most magic number but has a fun middle section that threatens to break into a reggae jam. It doesn’t, and it’s a shame. Broadening the band’s stylistic horizons and letting the players stretch out a bit would have injected some light into the album and honored Odin as inspirer of creative frenzy.
“The Feathered Consort,” a song about the goddess Frigg, opens with the Renaissance Faire flavor of some early Tull before heading back to meter changes with heavily stated “ones.” In his lyrics and his notes, Anderson asserts that Frigg and Freyja are two forms of the same goddess, a suggestion that has both ardent supporters and furious detractors in modern Paganism.
“Hammer on Hammer” forwards an odd take on an uncharacteristically reflective Thor that pushes Indo-European parallels maybe a step too far. There’s an interesting comparison of Thor’s “sacred belt” to the rings girding the planet Saturn, but portraying the Norse god as another Vulcan hammering on the anvil doesn’t quite work. The comparison of Thor and Putin, if the Russian leader’s appearance in the final verses (and accompanying music video) is meant to suggest some analogue between the two, also doesn’t quite come off. Parrish-James again bursts forth with an intriguing guitar solo that is immediately reined in by composed harmony lines.
“Wolf Unchained” channels the heavy feel of the 1971 Jethro Tull rocker “Locomotive Breath” as it portrays the monstrous Fenrir. Probably by chance – or maybe by submerged memory – the harmonized line of one of the repeated instrumental breaks is oddly similar to the harmonized line of a repeated vocal break in the obscure 1967 track “Silas Stingy” from The Who Sell Out. Altogether, it’s a fun track.
“The Perfect One,” about Baldr, is a strong example of both the metrical issue and the strange smothering of guitarist Parrish-James. It logically leads into “Trickster (and the Mistletoe),” which portrays Loki as “great shapeshifter, fire-brand,” “two-faced fool, the jester bold,” and “little giant” – but ends by comparing him to “the class clown” who seemingly tormented young Ian Anderson. Puzzlingly, the music used to portray Loki evokes 1990s commercial versions of traditional Irish music like Riverdance. Anderson doesn’t explain that musical choice.
“Cornucopia” sounds a bit like a reworking of Black Sabbath’s “Changes” (and, indeed, lifts the title of a Sabbath classic) mixed with vintage Linda Ronstadt. I mean that in a good way! It’s a gentle portrait of Freyr and Freyja that’s a welcome counter to all the macho metal songs about Norse mythological figures.
“The Navigators” portrays Njörd as god of seafarers with a heavy metal disco beat and retro synth arpeggios, the ebbing and flowing of which seems quite fitting for the subject matter. It’s followed by “Guardian’s Watch,” which oddly matches Heimdall with a pseudo-Baroque micro-sonata for flute. It’s not quite clear what the thought process was for that one.
“Ithavoll,” named for the field where the young gods meet in the early days of mythic time and where the gods who survive Ragnarök will meet after the end of the mythic time cycle, again features verses recited by Unnur Birna and Anderson. Replicating the famous “Isn’t this where we came in?” question that connects the last track of Pink Floyd’s The Wall back to its first, RökFlöte ends with the same heavy breathing that began the album. Evidently referencing the eternal recurrence in Norse myth rather than the psychological circles of Roger Waters’ vision, the fact that the 2022 prog album lifts a trick from an overplayed 1980 prog album is a symptom of the regressive nature of this new work.
And in the end
Should progressive rock show progress? What should our expectations be for a band releasing new material fifty-five years after its debut?
Judas Priest has continued to create solid new albums by bringing in younger musicians and welcoming them to shape the direction of the music. The Who created strange new sounds at the end of the John Entwistle era by embracing innovative approaches to instrumental improvisation that sometimes radically broke with the band’s past. It is definitely possible to continue on at an advanced age, for those willing to accept the challenge.
Ian Anderson can certainly still play some serious music on his flutes, even if he’s left behind the extended techniques inspired by jazz great Rahsaan Roland Kirk and now plays things much more straight. He demonstrably can still create new albums basically single-handedly. This recording, however, feels a bit too much like it’s (as the great old Tull song says) “living in the past,” and Anderson never really challenges himself to take a chance on something new and different.
For a more creative concept album on similar themes, check out Lucky Leif and the Longships, the 1975 release by Robert Calvert. Produced by Brian Eno and featuring various members of legendary space rockers Hawkwind – plus SF/fantasy author Michael Moorcock on banjo – the record imagines how North America may have developed if the Vikings had stayed after first arriving here around the year 1000. With a mind-blowing range of musical styles, serious grooves, and haunting lyrics, this fascinating album by fabulous musicians is worth digging out.
For an album that better expresses the beautifully eerie strangeness and mystery of the Norse myths without ever referencing them directly, I give the highest possible endorsement of Chants from Another Place, the gorgeous 2020 album by Jonathan Hultén, formerly of the Swedish metal band Tribulation. This amazing record has the most sublime vocal harmonies in popular music, the illustrations (by Hultén himself) are fantastic (in every meaning of the word), and the lyrics have all the mystery that is missing from the new Jethro Tull:
Here poets are gathering
Chanting in tribute to the divine
Here passes all wanderers
Seeking truth beyond cult and time
Finally, if you want to hear something that really sounds like Ragnarök, that truly gives musical form to the feeling that the world is crashing down into ruin around us, my current go-to album for this cultural moment is New Hope for the Wretched. Released in 1980, the first Plasmatics album still sounds like it’s been sent to us back in time from a post-apocalyptic near-future. With four songs under two minutes and another three that last less than three minutes, this punk rock bombardment comes at you hard and fast.
Every time I listened through the entirety of RökFlöte to prepare this column, I experienced a physical hunger for that particular Plasmastics record, a deep need to hear the dire warnings of Wendy O. Williams. Even after forty-three years, that violent slab of raunchy vinyl somehow seems more progressive than the Jethro Tull album released just last year.
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