Thick as a brick
It's a concept album about a young boy named Gerald Bostock (fake character), who writes a poem for a contest, but it is deemed offensive, and the boy gets disqualified. The lyrics are VERY complicated and understated, and to make a long story short, at least in my opinion, is based on the young boy's cynical outlook on life. But, you needn't worry about any of that, since the concept was mainly a big joke (or parody/spoof) by Ian Anderson & Company, and most importantly, the music is *so* overwhelmingly powerful and seductive, you won't care all that much about the lyrical meanings anyway.
The music on here drowns in it's own sophistication, refinement and high-class; the musicianship and it's high-class is something that shouldn't be taken too lightly, and should be the envy of many a musician and a listener. It starts off with acoustic guitar, followed by the flute, then Ian's vocals. The piece takes off from there. From there you will find tremendous melody, some hard rock, folk, jazz, and classical influences combined with many different shifts in tempo and time, and the band pulls no punches, as musical ideas keep flowing and flowing into each other like one huge piece, until the climactic end. It's divided into two halves. To be quite honest, the whole thing sounds like one gigantic classical piece, only with rock added. Also, I arguably think the second half is the stronger of the two, as the grandiose first half gets turned up a notch or two to a full blown english renaissance drama.
I can't say much more because I feel I'm at a lost for words. This is *indefinitely* one of my favorites in all of rock music, and music, period. If you REALLY like musical music, classical, jazz, folk or prog-rock in general, I think this is VERY ESSENTIAL and I highly recommend it to music lovers. It's *that* good.
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