Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
For the Benefit of those who believe that Jethro Tull starts at Aqualung and ends around the time when the golden age of Progressive Rock gave way in time to the neo-Progressive successor, Steven Wilson, who himself is no stranger to the delight and sorcery of the genre has remixed, and indeed given new life to perhaps one of Jethro Tull’s least mentioned, and often least enjoyed in certain circles albums, the 1970 classic Benefit.
The 50th Anniversary of any recording is worth revisiting, but it is arguably with greater sentiment involved on behalf of the listener when it comes to this particular album, stuck perhaps, the meeting point from the Blues to the aforementioned Prog that was to come, and to which the band has found itself placed within as the sense of the more flowing ensemble was to highlight in later years, and indeed throughout the group’s long illustrious period at the heart of the nation’s idea of how music can be transformative and detailed.
Caught between the Blues period and what was to come as soon as people caught the image of the lonely, shifty, shady tramp that figures prominently on the front of Aqualung, Benefit never seemed to have the love it fully deserved, and as the listener immerses themselves into the enhanced edition, the associated recordings of the time, the two live concerts captured at Tanglewood and the Chicago Aragon Ballroom, plus two DVDs of the same evenings (one audio only), that love not only makes itself known, but offers a different dimension to what may have been apparent at the time.
This is not the first time that Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson has had his hand on the remixing tiller of Jethro Tull’s output, indeed the aforementioned Aqualung is a revelation of an already stand out piece of art, however in Benefit, the full effect of time and modern techniques is to be heard, and as the tracks To Cry You A Song, Sossity: You’re A Woman, Inside, Nothing To Say, and various other songs from the abundant package fill the air, the belief in savouring something astronomical flows over the listener like gentle water over pebbles, followed by the rush of tsunami like emotions in which the advance of this album profits.
Time, it is a passenger and a friend, when the occasion calls for it; and in this incredibly poignant reminder of what can be achieved when the future bites down on a past release and is given due modern care, the benefit is in the hands of the listener. Tull never started with Aqualung, they emerged long before that, but in the midst of the Blues and the assent into the world of the progressive, there stands Benefit, and it is a fine inclusion of the body of work by the band to get the Steven Wilson treatment for the third decade of the 21st Century.
Ian D. Hall