JETHRO TULL SHARE NEW MATERIAL
Ian Anderson on The Zealot Gene, the first new Tull album for more than 17 years.
Jethro Tull’s 22nd studio album will land on January 28. Released on InsideOut, The Zealot Gene will be the first set of new material under their name since 2003’s The Jethro Tull Christmas Album.
As frontman Ian Anderson tells Prog, the new album takes inspiration from the Scriptures: “I think of drawing upon elements of the Bible in the same way as drawing on elements of society as subject material for songs. It’s taking something and turning it into something else. It’s what I do. I just feel that the good – the love, peace and care, particularly in the New Testament – should be shouted from the rooftops. But then the other stuff – vengeance, retaliation, anger and zeal – is not something we should push under the floorboards. It’s our history, good and bad, and we should be able to confront it and move on.”
The title track reflects how, in this social media age, “most of us tend to get our knickers in a twist about something. Whether it’s Donald Trump losing an election or climate change. We react through social media, and it’s about the way we tend to reduce everything to black and white, ignoring the many shades of grey, or even beige, lurking in between.”
Opening track Mrs Tibbets is “a slightly oblique look into the dropping of the Hiroshima bomb”, while the erotically charged promo single Shoshana Sleeping was inspired by the Old Testament’s Song Of Solomon. Barren Beth, Wild Desert John is partly about John The Baptist but also Anderson’s own cousin, a priest who, he says, “was a bit of a crazy man, and sadly ended his days locked away for his own good, as well as that of his parishioners.”
The album features the current line-up of Jethro Tull: Anderson, Joe Parrish-James (guitar), Scott Hammond (drums), John O’Hara (keys/accordion) and David Goodier (bass), with additional guitar from Florian Opahle. Work began in 2017, but the pandemic curtailed the band’s 2020 plans, and forced them to record the last five songs remotely.
“This album was very much written for my musicians to play,” Anderson says. “I made demos, gave them copies of the lyrics. They were engaged from the off. It’s very much a band album.”
Anderson has three Christmas shows planned in December, and Jethro Tull will tour Europe in 2022.
“This was written for my musicians to play. It’s very much a band album.”