Photo credit: Assunta Opahle

“Suddenly there is a vacuum of empty space after releasing an album that you need to fill with a new album” – Interview with Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull

Author Arto Mäenpää - 9.3.2025

Ian Anderson had been saying for months following the release of “RökFlöte” that he would embark on a new project in late 2023. He waited only a few weeks before the first notions began to solidify into some drafted words of intent and in May 2024, some unfinished music recorded earlier with John O’Hara, David Goodier and James Duncan became the starting point for the new songs as they took shape.

Writing the lyrics and melodies for all the newly written material came very quickly once he began in earnest during June and just seemed to slot right in to the musical feel and styles of the earlier recordings.

Anderson’s writing here is often on a more personal level of lyric content than we are used to hearing. Interspersed with his usual observational descriptions are the slightly more heart-on-sleeve moments of soul-baring – albeit not on the topics more often paraded by the usual I-me lyric merchants of pop and rock.

Some of the songs are developed from unfinished instrumental demos made some years ago although this does not result in a huge stylistic divide to jump out at the listener. Apart from the signature flute solos and melodies, accordion, mandolin, acoustic and tenor guitars feature on several tracks too, so the subtle backdrop of acoustic and folk rock serves to remind of the Tull heritage of the 70s.

Chaoszine sat down with Ian Anderson to discuss about the band’s brand new “Curious Ruminant” album which saw the light of day on March 7th via InsideOut Music as well as talked what lies ahead for the rock’n’roll legends. You can check out the entire video interview below:

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You can check out Jethro Tull‘s latest “Curious Ruminant” -album in full below:

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