Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson says his new album ‘Curious Ruminant’ is the most personal record he has ever made.
Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson says his new album Curious Ruminant contains his most personal collection of songs
The 77-year-old musician – who has been the flautist and vocalist of the prog rock band since 1967 – took a new approach to songwriting on the LP and took a deep dive into his “own personal things”.
Speaking to BANG Showbiz, he said: “My points of view and my feelings are expressed much more than they would normally be in most of the lyrics I’ve written in my life. There’s a lot more I/me pronouns than usual. Usually it’s he/she/it. This one’s a kind of an I/me album. And yet, ironically, it’s very much a band album, it’s not a solo album.”
‘Curious Ruminant’ is Jethro Tull’s third album in three years, following 2023’s ‘RökFlöte’ and 2022’s ‘The Zealot Gene’. It is the band’s 24th studio album, a run of records which began in 1968 with ‘This Was’.
The final track of ‘Curious Ruminant’ becomes very personal, as Anderson diverts from the expected with a spoken word entry. ‘Interim Sleep’ is based on a poem he wrote a few years ago “for somebody bereaved”.
He said: “In that poem, I was talking from beyond to the person, saying, ‘Hey, cheer up’, and giving some positive thoughts about death not being final. We will be together in another life.”
Anderson deliver the lyrics in a spoken-word format because it “seemed more appropriate to the subject material” than a melody would be.
He explained: “I needed something a bit quieter on the end of the album. With that in mind, I decided it would be a spoken word piece that would be rather intimate, and I based it on that poem I had written.”
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