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Reviews
Ian Anderson
Thick as a Brick 2
EMI, 2012
If there's anything movies have taught us, it's that sequels almost always suck in comparison to the original. While there aren't nearly as many sequels in the musical world, occasionally an artist will go back and revisit one of the ideas that made them famous in the first place. In almost all of these cases, such as with Mike Oldfield's endless Tubular Bells reinterpretations, the final product winds up, for lack of a better term, blowing. It languishes as a pale imitation of the original, merely a failed attempt to recapture one's own past greatness. But then, on that rare occasion, an artist will not only create a sequel that doesn't suck, but a sequel that holds up well in comparison to the original, and, even more rarely, a beautiful album in its own right. Folks, Ian Anderson's Thick as a Brick 2, a direct sequel to his band Jethro Tull's 1972 hit Thick as a Brick forty years on, is one such an album.There are many musical references to the original album, but what makes this album great is that none of them feel forced. All of the musical references within the body of the music are subtle and played with maturity, being respectful to the original while developing themselves within a new context. Most of the time, the themes are so seamlessly blended into the surrounding music that you don't even notice that they're there, and…
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Older Reviews
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- Vacation – Self Titled
- Thisquietarmy – Resurgence
- Off! – Self Titled
- The Great Old Ones – Al Azif
- Torche – Harmonicraft
- Rammstein – Made in Germany 1995-2011
- The Korea – Колесницы Богов
- Wolfbrigade – Damned
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