Album title: Benefit
Artist: Jethro Tull
Nationality: English
Label: Chrysalis/Island
Chronology: Third
Grade: B
Previous Experience of this Artist: Just the first album I listened to. Think I heard
Heavy Horses a few years back too. No, I haven’t heard
Aqualung or
Thick As a Brick, not yet anyway.
The Trollheart Factor: 3
Landmark value: Coming on the heels of their second, chart-breaking album (why wasn’t that on my frigging list? Dammit!) this seems to have underwhelmed the critics (but what do they know anyway?) while capitalising on Tull’s sterling performance in the charts. This hit the top five in the UK, Germany and Scandinavia, and almost scraped into the top ten in the US. So not bad.
Tracklisting: With You There to Help Me/Nothing to Say/Alive and Well and Living In/Son/For Michael Collins, Jeffrey and Me/To Cry You a Song/A Time for Everything?/Inside/Play in Time/Sossity; You’re a Woman
Comments: Of course we kick off with the damn flute! Slow, medieval style, very folky as we launch into “With You There to Help Me” then it kicks up with some decent guitar. “Nothing to Say” reminds me of early Kansas somehow, quite guitar-driven, don’t hear any flute in this so far. Not a bad song at all. Is it prog? Meh, I would say not. But we’re only two tracks in - and there’s that thrice-damned flute again! - so we’ve a ways to go before we would pronounce any such verdict. Piano leads in “Alive and Well and Living In” and here comes the flute of course. Got a kind of Yes feel to this one, pretty short but quite heavy, then ELO must have been listening to Tull as “Son” sounds a lot like their later material. It’s also a short track, just over two minutes.
“For Michael Collins, Jeffrey and Me” has a nice gentle acoustic guitar lead-in, might be a ballad. Kind of. Quite medieval again, zero flute which is good. Damn I hate that flute. I’ve said that before, haven’t I? I’m saying it again. I find “To Cry You a Song” very much more in the blues/hard rock mould of the likes of Zep than anything really prog, A bit too long for what it is, then “ A Time for Everything?” is similar, sort of, but with added flute. “Inside” is short enough, a more uptempo one while “Play in Time” gives me a kind of boogie feel, very bouncy but again is it prog? At this point, I’d have to say no. The album then closes on “Sossity; You’re a Woman”, which at least has a nice keyboard line underpinning it. But you know, yawn.
Favourite track(s): I have to be honest: I don’t like anything here, and that’s not just because I’m already biased towards Jethro Tull. Nothing grabbed me and I was as bored as a man listening to a party political broadcast in Italian. Who doesn’t speak Italian.
Least favourite track(s):
Overall impression: A big, fat, greasy meh and a spreading of the hands: why? Why are these guys considered prog? Do not get it.
Personal Rating: 
Legacy Rating: 
Final Rating: 