A Passion Play [Enhanced, Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered]

No-one likes this album: they either love it or they hate it. It polarises people.

Upon first listening to A Passion Play I was quite disappointed, especially when compared with Thick As A Brick, Jethro Tull's previous concept album. 'Why did I buy this junk?' I thought. My second listen felt a little better. By the third listen I was addicted.

It's fairly similar in structure to Thick As A Brick, though much darker in feeling. Brilliant chord progression and licks. I love the little intermission where "The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles" is told, backed with amazingly suitable music and other effects.

I absolutely love this album. It's a very close second to Thick As A Brick for me.

As a Tull fan since my schooldays (first getting into Thick As A Brick when I was around 13), I can never decide which is my favourite album of theirs. It's usually the one I'm listening to at the time (with the exception of the bland disposable syntho-pap of Under Wraps). The same rule holds good for A Passion Play ....... but only just. Whilst superficially similar to TAAB, and even half-reprising a couple of the themes of that masterpiece, APP is certainly not an easy album to get into.
I recently bought the enhanced CD, as my old vinyl copy had become so scratchy as to be almost unplayable. The clarity of sound, the bonus video of the Hare Who Lost his Spectacles and the sumptuous packaging, containing some quite illuminating notes penned recently by Ian Anderson, were absolutely first class.

On my long drive into work each day, I've been playing the CD several times (yes, even the Hare bit!). Last night I woke up with the music so stuck in my head that I couldn't sleep for hours. Yes! A quarter of a century on, I had got into APP all over again! Never mind the somewhat pretentious concept and the downright morbid motif, just listen to the virtuoso performance as themes merge and intertwine in magical fashion. Heavy, almost Black Sabbath-like guitar assaults you from the left, swirling flute and sax from the right, atmospheric keyboard sounds and pounding, mesmeric drums punctuate everything, whilst Ian Anderson's vocals have rarely conveyed such passion.

For a pleasant chill-out session I would certainly plump for almost any other Tull album (notably Songs From the Wood, TAAB or Heavy Horses), but for a profoundly moving and ultimately highly satisfying musical appreciation, there is little to compare with A Passion Play.

I couldn't quite bring myself to award the maximum 5 stars, simply because the intensity of this piece precludes too frequent listening, and the whimsical humour of "Hare" grates after a while (the CD does not permit the listener to skip that track). However this much-maligned album remains an essential purchase for anyone interested in this most cerebral of classic Brit rockers.

Almost 20 years have passed since I last listened to this. When it was first released my flatmate and I listened to it obsessively to the point that it enetered our consciousness. I had truly forgotten about its titanic presence in the pantheon of rock, and as a previous reviewer suggests, it is a piece of genius up there with Handel's Messiah, etc. which will come to have its rightful place in time.
Well, thanks to finally embracing MP3 technology in my mid fifties, 'Passion Play' is back in my head and I can't shake it out - nor do I want to! I've just come back from a bike ride and wasn't connecting with the landscape. Those haunting lyrics; 'All along the icy wastes, their faces smiling in the gloom; roll up, roll down feeling unwound, step into the viewing room!'really are quite disturbing. Of course, all the words of 'the Hare' come flooding back and put a smile on my face - a wonderful interlude, but for me one truly magic moment is the symphonic burst at the end of the 'Hare' which takes us back to that ominous pulse and swirling layers of flute which carries us onward.

This is the best of Tull - the weave of opera, obtuse yet such poetic lyrics, the undercurrent of mocking menace, the signature flute and the craftsmanship of the band. As with Schubert or Van Gogh, its day will surely come