The Jethro Tull Christmas Album is the 21st studio album released by Jethro Tull in September 2003. This was the band’s last studio album for 19 years (until the release of The Zealot Gene in 2022), as well as the last album to feature the lineup of Ian Anderson, guitarist Martin Barre (and his last album with the group), bassist Jonathan Noyce, keyboardist Andrew Giddings, and drummer Doane Perry. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to spend the holiday season at a renaissance fair with a bunch of prog-rock musicians from the 1970’s, this is basically it.
The Jethro Tull Christmas Album is a mix of new material, re-recordings of Tull’s own suitably themed material and arrangements of traditional Christmas music. In 2009, the live album Christmas at St Bride’s 2008 was included with the original album on CD.
Jethro Tull wear the holiday spirit well — think Aqualung after the Christmas ghosts have had their way with him. The originals simmer with eccentric, eclectic, folky energy, rocking ditties threaded through with Celtic stylings, jazzy undercurrents, Ian Anderson’s distinctive flute and wry humor. The spry “Last Man at the Party” celebrates the excesses of the season, while the wistful “First Snow in Brooklyn” is a winter’s tale about cooled romance.
Though the Tull tunes lilt with carol-esque abandon, the reworked traditional songs are the tracks that really sparkle. On “Greensleeved” the band spices up the seasonal classic with a dash of bossa nova flair; “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and “We Five Kings” swing sassily with jazzy syncopation; and “Holly Herald” is a sprightly take on “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” Few things are more festive than accomplished musicians having a dickens of a good time, and that’s what this album is all about.
Of the opening song, Birthday Card at Christmas, Ian Anderson has said: “My daughter Gael, like millions of other unfortunates, celebrates her birthday within a gnat’s whisker of Christmas. Overshadowed by the Great Occasion, such birthdays can be flat, perfunctory and fleetingly token in their uneventful passing. The daunting party and festive celebration of the Christian calendar overshadows too, some might argue, the humble birthday of one Mr. J. Christ. Funny old 25ths, Decembers…”
