Ian Anderson and company seemed to make a conscious effort to update
Jethro Tull's sound on this record. And, to the amazement (and distress) of many, it was voted the Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Performance. Truth is, it isn't a bad album, with an opening track that qualifies as hard rock and pretty much shouts its credentials out in
Martin Barre's screaming lead guitar line, present throughout. "Jump Start" and "Raising Steam" also rock hard, and no one can complain of too much on this record being soft, apart from the acoustic "The Waking Edge," along with "Budapest" and "Said She Was a Dancer,"
Anderson's two aging rock-star's-eye-view accounts of meeting women from around the world. The antiwar song "Mountain Men" is classic
Tull-styled electric folk, all screaming electric guitars at a pretty high volume by its end. Overall, this is a fairly successful album and arguably their best since 1978, even if it does seem a little insignificant in relation to, say,
Thick As a Brick. By this time
Tull was effectively a core trio of
Anderson,
Barre, and bassist
Dave Pegg, augmented by whatever musicians (drummers
Gerry Conway and
Doane Perry,
Fairport Convention keyboard player
Martin Allcock, and violinist
Ric Sanders) that they needed to fill out their sound. The result is a very lean-sounding group and a record probably as deserving of a Grammy as any other album of its year -- in the cosmic scheme, it sort of made up for
Tull's not winning one for
Thick As a Brick or
Aqualung, or for
Dave Pegg's former band
Fairport Convention never winning. ~ Bruce Eder