Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Every band that has managed to have the kind of longevity that spans over several decades will have in their catalogue the distinction of having albums that are instantly recognisable, the ones that cemented their place in Time, and the ones that for some reason or other defy the mysticism that has taken place. Then there is the odd one that for many perhaps passed them by and yet has all the qualities of a gem in waiting, an album that didn’t shake the charts at the time of release and when listened to more than a quarter of a century on sounds cool, passionate, and filled with tracks that just free the imagination.
For Jethro Tull that album was originally released as the end of the 20th Century was imminent, as people’s concerns and thoughts were being consumed by what they were told was a possible catastrophe in waiting, so the .com bubble was reaching its peak; perhaps what was used as a modern day approach of the time by the band became synonymous with what others saw as a warning, and so J-Tull Dot Com barely broke the top 50 in the U.K. and set an unwanted record of becoming the first of only two records by the band that didn’t make the top 30 in the year of release.
J-Tull Dot Com may not spring immediately to mind when the average audiophile lists their favourites, and yet as the 2026 extended re-release, part of the continuing boxsets produced under the banner of the group, willingly shows, its presence is not just as padding in the great Tull discography, but as willing combatant that whilst perhaps not having the audience spellbound like Aqualung, Songs From The Wood or Stand Up, it certainly knows how send a chill of expectation into the air and perform for all its worth, producing elements of sound that prove no matter what you can still rock when the discourse takes you.
For Ian Anderson, Martin Barre, Jonathan Noyce, Andrew Giddings, and Doane Perry, the extended album serves up nuggets of cool groove which fire an explosion of lyric and sound that defies the Blues and Progressive eras of the group and lays down a storm waiting to be embraced. As tracks such as Wicked Windows, Black Mamba, Bends Like A Willow, and El Niño show off the new remixed sound by Bruce Soord, it is to the bonus material that the boxset gains new ground, and with tracks such as Aborted Soliloquy, It All Trickles Down, Stigmata, and a piece that ended up on the Ian Anderson solo album from 2000, The Secret Language Of Birds the boxset truly underlines the importance of the period between the Blues/ Prog period and the return in 2022 with a marrying of hard rock and Eastern music influence.
A reminder that we must not overlook what we might consider that which sits in between, for it is often to be viewed as the glue that binds everything we know together; J-Tull Dot Com is comprehensive and a dramatic inclusion to the enhanced boxset collection.
Ian D. Hall