Album Review: Jethro Tull, "Catfish Rising"

The 25th album by Ian Anderson and JETHRO TULL and the 19th collection of fresh material in 23 years! Synthesisers are pushed aside for this project and are replaced with more natural instrumentation. As with most of Tull's work, the more interesting soloing is found between the interplay of Anderson's throaty flute and Martin Barre's blues and sometimes jazz-based runs. Check "Rocks on the Road" and you'll see what I mean.

Catfish Rising is definitely a return to roots. I'll avoid saying "basics" because they can't be defined that simply. Obviously very blues-based, the work at times sounds American but still retains that Oldie Worlde Englishness they're famous for with mandolins and flute in the forefront.

"Still Loving You Tonight" has a gripping melody, and what could become almost forgettable in some one else's hands transforms itself into something magical with the authentic Tull treatment. "Sleeping with the Dog" takes a straight idea and turns it into something fresh, but this isn't always the case with some of the other tracks.

With their original formula, Tull should variate the structure a bit more and venture outside the limitations of such obvious patterns. The material is at times "old hat" and only saved by the fact that its Tull at the helms.

This album will never burn the house down, but there is still a fire burning within the beast. Nothing to get over excited about, but I'm sure the party faithful will love it.

Grade B -

Mike Harris

Riff Raff

September 1991

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!