The Broadsword and the Beast is the finest thing Jethro Tull made in the 1980s — a strange, wintry collision of Norse imagery, English folk melody and gleaming synthesizers. Released in 1982 behind an illustration by a future Star Wars designer, it is dark, warm and unexpectedly beautiful.

The short version

The Broadsword and the Beast (1982) is the fourteenth studio album by Jethro Tull, and the first not produced by Ian Anderson: the job went to Paul Samwell-Smith, once the bassist of the Yardbirds. Anderson and Martin Barre are joined by Fairport Convention’s Dave Pegg on bass, new keyboardist Peter-John Vettese and drummer Gerry Conway. Its two sides are named rather than numbered — the Beastie side and the Broadsword side — and it reached the American Top 20.

A new band, an outside producer

After the upheaval that followed the album A, Ian Anderson rebuilt around Martin Barre and Dave Pegg, bringing in the young keyboardist Peter-John Vettese and drummer Gerry Conway, who had played with Cat Stevens. For the first time he also handed production to someone else: Paul Samwell-Smith, formerly of the Yardbirds. The sessions ran on and off for nearly a year at Maison Rouge, and yielded far more material than a single record could hold. The sleeve came from the illustrator Iain McCaig, who would later design Darth Maul and Queen Amidala for the Star Wars films — an oddly fitting pedigree for an album full of beasts and broadswords.

The sound

Folk and synthesizer should not sit together comfortably, and here they do. Peter-John Vettese’s keyboards give the album a chilly, modern sheen, while Dave Pegg’s mandolin and bass keep it rooted in the English tradition, and Martin Barre plays with an edge that borders on the metallic. Above it all Anderson sings of seals, storms, sailors and warriors, his flute weaving through arrangements that are darker than anything since Stormwatch. The production is unmistakably of 1982, and some listeners find the drums too polite. The atmosphere, though, is superb: cold outside, firelight within.

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The songs

‘Beastie’ opens the first side and ‘Clasp’ follows with a haunting flute riff and real momentum. ‘Fallen on Hard Times’ is bitter and topical, and ‘Slow Marching Band’ one of the gentlest melodies Anderson ever wrote. The second side belongs to ‘Broadsword’ itself, a slow, monumental piece of Norse foreboding, and to the lovely ‘Pussy Willow’ and the surging ‘Seal Driver.’ ‘Watching Me Watching You’ brings the synthesizers fully forward, before the brief ‘Cheerio’ waves the listener out — as it would close the concerts on the tour that followed.

Reception and legacy

The album reached the Top 20 in America and is now widely regarded as the best Jethro Tull made in the 1980s, standing well above the electronic experiments on either side of it. Admirers concede the production dates it, and that Gerry Conway’s drumming is workmanlike beside Barriemore Barlow’s, yet almost everyone agrees the songwriting is top-shelf, on a par with the folk trilogy. Anderson himself has praised the rhythm section, Vettese’s thoughtful playing and Barre’s guitar. The elaborate 1982 world tour, staged with beast-inspired lighting, he later judged rather too ambitious.

The verdict

The Broadsword and the Beast is not where to begin with Jethro Tull, but it is the essential album of their later career, and a genuine surprise for anyone who assumes the band lost their way after the 1970s. Give it a winter evening and it repays you handsomely: the melodies are among Anderson’s best, the mood is unlike anything else in the catalogue. Come for the slow grandeur of ‘Broadsword,’ stay for ‘Pussy Willow’ and ‘Seal Driver,’ and hear folk music and synthesizers making unlikely, lasting peace.

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