Originally released in 1999, this was to be Jethro Tull‘s last studio album for 23 years, the 2003 Christmas album apart, though nobody had any idea at the time. J-Tull Dot Com is now being reissued as a 3CD plus Blu-ray set, and made available on vinyl for the first time. The first disc holds the original album, the second the same record remixed by Bruce Soord, which makes it sonically clearer and cleaner, with Ian Anderson‘s flute now much sharper, and a bonus disc gathers six unreleased studio tracks plus three ‘live’ recordings from Katowice 2000.
J-Tull Dot Com, despite its quirkiness, became a sort-of favourite with the Tull fanbase. If it did nothing else, it showed Tull were prepared to move into a new sonic landscape and try something different, revealing another side to the band, and it was an improvement on a couple of their more lacklustre 1980s albums (it seems the 80s were a bad time for many established acts).
Overall, this is a fairly decent album, with the powerful flute/guitar/keys interplay that helped Tull create their sound, the band staying close to their rock, folk and prog heritage. It begins strongly, nodding to earlier Tull on ‘Spiral’ and ‘Dot Com’, with some very moody flute and a female vocalist. Other standout tracks include ‘Hunt By Numbers’ (Anderson’s ode to felines), ‘Wicked Windows’, which is reminiscent in part of Minstrel In The Gallery, ‘AWOL’, ‘A Gift Of Roses’ and, in particular, the delightful ‘Bends Like A Willow’, all of which feature some sparkling playing, especially from Martin Barre and Andrew Giddings.
What detracts from the overall quality, though, is the inclusion of pieces like ‘Nothing @ All’, a one-minute tinkling on the keys, as well as dire efforts like ‘Hot Mango Flush’ and ‘Mango Surprise’. What were they thinking? These are really poor pieces. What would ‘that poor old sod Aqualung’ have made of this?
Those tracks are thrown into sharper focus by several of the bonus tracks on disc three which, in the view of this reviewer, were far more deserving of a place, pieces such as the intriguing ‘It All Trickles Down’, the instrumental ‘Recollection No 5’, with some fine keyboard work from Giddings, and ‘Sad Suit’, as well as the acoustic version of ‘Dot Com’, just Anderson and an acoustic guitar, all of which merited a spot on the original album. The three ‘live’ tracks that close disc three, ‘Hunt By Numbers’, ‘Dot Com’ and ‘AWOL’, are all performed well and mostly faithful to the album versions.
By the time Jethro Tull reappeared with 2022’s The Zealot Gene, the services of long-time guitarist Martin Barre had been dispensed with, so this is a last chance to catch Martin playing in a band where his sterling work over forty years was a key factor in helping Tull achieve and maintain legendary status.
