By Nick Tate
Something new to put under the tree for that prog fan on your holiday shopping list: “The Jethro Tull Christmas Album” is getting a fresh new spin in an expanded box set stuffed with a sackful of extra goodies. Rechristened “Fresh Snow at Christmas,” the 4-CD/blu-ray (or double-vinyl) deluxe collection includes all the material from the original 2003 album — Tull’s 21st studio recording — remixed and remastered in stereo, 5.1 surround sound and Dolby Atmos by Bruce Soord (The Pineapple Thief). But the real draw here is the inclusion of two bonus Christmas concerts recorded at London’s famed St. Bride’s Church in 2006 and 2008.
At first blush, this set might seem to be more of a curiosity than a true Tull classic. Seven of the 16 studio recordings are new interpretations of previously released holiday-themed tracks, including 1968’s “A Christmas Song,” “Another Christmas Song” (from 1989) and “Ring Out Solstice Bells” (1976). But “Fresh Snow” is noteworthy for several reasons that make it more than simply a one-off oddity to place on the shelf next to Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” and Victor Schumann’s “The Voices of Christmas.”
For one thing, Soord’s diamond-cut remixes give the studio material a sparkling new clarity, revealing colors, textures and details that were harder to distinguish on the muddier first-issue release. (The set features both the original 2003 mix and the 2024 remixes, so you can compare the two side by side.) Even Soord’s stereo reworkings of tracks like “Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow,” “Birthday Card at Christmas,” “First Snow On Brooklyn” and “Last Man at the Party” are richer, warmer and deeper than the originals, with each voice and instrument coming through as clear as a sleigh bell. In 5.1 surround, the remixes have an almost 3D-audio quality that’s about as close as it gets to sounding like a live performance.
But what truly distinguishes this collection is that it features the last performances of long-time Tull guitarist Martin Barre with the band, before he parted ways with frontman/composer/flautist Ian Anderson 12 years ago. Barre was Anderson’s right-hand (axe)man for more than 40 years, between 1968 and 2012, when Anderson temporarily disbanded the collective. (In 2022, Anderson resurrected the band with new personnel, releasing “The Zealot Gene” under the Tull name). Barre’s distinctive electric and acoustic fretwork — nearly as integral to Tull’s eclectic prog-folk-blues-classical fusion sound as Anderson’s chuffing flute solos — is front and center in the new mixes on “Fresh Snow.” He also contributes one of his own compositions, the album-closing instrumental track “A Winter Snowscape.” The classical-rock piece was (and is) a highlight of the original studio recording, showcasing the dynamic interplay of Barre’s intricate acoustic-guitar virtuosity and Anderson’s idiosyncratic flute playing. It also offers a hint of the direction Barre would take as a solo artist, post-Tull. Longtime Tull players Andrew Giddings (on keys and accordion), bassist Jonathan Noyce and drummers Doane Perry and James Duncan deliver strong contributions here, as well, in some of their last recorded works with the band.
Predictably perhaps, the reworked Tull tracks and the handful of new songs written for the studio album are what make this release worth its weight in silver and gold. The band’s lounge-jazz renderings of traditional Christmas carols — cleverly retitled “Greensleeved,” “Holly Herald” and “We Five Kings,” along with (natch) “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” — are interesting, but less successful. Even Barre acknowledged he wasn’t particularly enamored of the reworked carols here. (“I really don’t think that putting a traditional Christmas carol in 5/4 makes it good or better than it was,” he told me in a recent interview.) Even so, there are enough flashes of musical brilliance and Tullian appeal to recommend giving this one a listen or two around the holidays.
Interestingly, the live performances of the traditional carols in the St. Bride’s concerts fare much better, sitting fittingly alongside a handful of Tull classics and Anderson solo pieces. The first of the two concerts, a previously unreleased Ian Anderson Band performance from 2006, is a storytellers-style show with Anderson discussing the origins of the nine tracks here. It kicks off with 1969’s sprightly “Living in the Past” (Tull’s first hit) and showcases new takes on “A Christmas Song” (with violinist Ann Marie Calhoun replicating Anderson’s original flute line), “Griminelli’s Lament” (from his 2003 solo album “Rupi’s Dance”), “Pastime With Good Company” (featuring the St. Bride’s choir), Faure’s “Pavane,” a jazzy time-shifting medley of Mozart melodies (“Moz’art”) and a nearly-unrecognizable orchestral-rock reworking of “Aqualung.”
The second show, recorded in 2008 and previously issued as a standalone CD, features Barre, Duncan and two musicians who are still with the current Tull lineup — John O’Hara (keys, piano, accordion) and David Goodier (bass). It is the better of the two live shows in this collection, at least for Tull fans, with eight of the 12 tracks taken from the band’s deep catalogue, along with a few carols, choir performances and church singalongs. “Weathercock” (from 1978’s “Heavy Horses”) opens this set and features dazzling guitar-flute work throughout. Other highlights include “Living in These Hard Times” (a bonus track from “Heavy Horses”), “A Winter Snowscape” (Barre’s gorgeously lilting masterpiece), “Another Christmas Song” and two tracks from 1977’s “Songs From the Wood” — “Jack in the Green” and “Fires at Midnight”. The album closes out with a weirdly appealing shotgun marriage of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and the acoustic intro to 1972’s “Thick as a Brick” (with Anderson cheekily reworking the epic’s signature line: “And you’re three wisemen don’t know how it feels…to be thick as a brick”).
Taken together, these two shows offer a pretty good taste of the 40-plus Christmas concerts Anderson and Co. have delivered over the past decade, benefitting homeless charities and church restoration efforts in the U.K. and Europe. Along with the “Christmas Album” remixes, this collection is a celebratory capstone to one of the strongest Tull lineups since the band’s 1970s heyday. The set also manages to capture a band still trying something new after five decades of making music — something Anderson has said was a primary aim in producing the original studio album 21 years ago.
“Jethro Tull has a few songs, going back to 1968 when I wrote ‘A Christmas Song’ that are kinda seasonal in flavor that I decided we would re-record and put on this album along with some newly written music, along with some church music and classical music and Christmas carols,” he told me in an interview shortly after the album’s release in 2003. “But I still wanted to make a Jethro Tull album that has the musical weight and gravity of any other studio album, but generally goes with the feel of Christmas without being tacky.
“The danger, obviously, is that people will say, ‘Oh, goodness me, Ian Anderson has turned into Bing Crosby with a flute!’ That’s not my primary aim, although I’m Bing Crosby-like, with a baritone and not given to singing in the Bon Jovi range.”
In recent comments about the new box set, Anderson noted that religious devotion isn’t required to enjoy the Christmas and Christmas-adjacent pieces on “Fresh Snow.”
“I think the holiday period means a lot to a lot of people. And I’m happy to report that when we play our more or less annual Christmas fundraisers in cathedrals and churches, not only in the U.K. but elsewhere, that it’s not just Christians who turn up for the celebration,” he said. “It’s agnostics, atheists and a few people of other religions too, because the Christian Christmas is a sharing time, and I think that’s a very positive thing.”
https://jethrotullband.lnk.to/JethroTullChristmasAlbum
CD1: Original Album Mixes
1. Birthday Card at Christmas (3:40)
2. Holly Herald (4:17)
3. A Christmas Song (2:47)
4. Another Christmas Song (3:32)
5. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (4:34)
6. Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow (3:37)
7. Last Man at the Party (4:49)
8. Weathercock (4:17)
9. Pavane (4:19)
10. First Snow on Brooklyn (4:58)
11. Greensleeved (2:39)
12. Fire at Midnight (2:26)
13. We Five Kings (3:17)
14. Ring Out Solstice Bells (4:05)
15. Bouree (4:25)
16. A Winter Snowscape (4:56)
Line-up / Musicians
Ian Anderson / vocals, flute, acoustic guitars
Martin Barre / guitars
Doane Perry / drums, percussion
Andrew Giddings / keyboards, bass
Jonathan Noyce / bass
With
James Duncan / guitars
The Sturcz Quartet / strings
David Pegg / mandolin
CD2: 2024 Remixes by Bruce Soord
CD3: Christmas Live At St. Bride’s 2008 (newly remixed by Bruce Soord)
CD4: The Ian Anderson Band Live At St. Bride’s 2006 (previously unreleased)
Blu-ray: Dolby Atmos, 5.1 Surround Sound & High Resolution Stereo Mixes of The Jethro Tull Christmas Album, as well as High Resolution Stereo Mixes of both live recordings
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