Album review: REFLECTION CLUB – Still Thick As A Brick

REFLECTION CLUB - Still Thick As A Brick

Madvedge Records [Release date 03.03.21]

How do you out-Tull Jethro Tull? Well you put together an album pastiche and call it Still Thick As A Brick. Package it up in a large format digi-book and add in the ubiquitous 5.1 mix. Pretentious or what?

The packaging – ‘Rellington Stone’ (Rolling Stone, geddit?) is a reimagination of St Cleve Chronicle – taking the format of a music magazine complete with spoof adverts for guitar shops and albums. It also affords the opportunity to include a review of the actual album. It’s all a bit tongue in cheek and maybe even a bit naff. Especially when the digi-book includes a condensed glossy version of the text and then a more expanded version.

In the aforementioned review it states “Reflection Club achieves a sound like Jethro Tull at their best without ever running the risk of sounding like a degenerate plagiarism”. Mmm. So how different is the music?

Essentially, the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Lutz Meinert, the album also features an English singer/flautist Paul Forrest who is in tribute band Jethro Tull Experience.

It is Forrest who really makes this a Jethro Tull tribute album and even with Ulla Harmuth’s flute without his Anderson-friendly and typically double-tracked vocals and the derivative album title this might have nearly escaped the obvious cries of foul play.

Those in favour might say that this album is what might have happened in 1973 if Tull had made Thick As A Brick II and we hadn’t actually waited until 2012 for the follow-up.

The album is beautifully produced and there are some very fine instrumental passages with Meinert’s keys and Nils Conrad’s Barre-esque guitar a particular highlight. Somewhere there is a very fine prog album bursting to get out, but this copycat Tull may deter all but the casual listener. Flattering, if maybe a tad fatuous. ***

Review by David Randall

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