Having already grimaced at length on the subject of my tenuous relationship with Jethro Tull back in 2021, I'll add only that my current working theory is that you're probably safe with anything recorded prior to 1973, beyond which it begins to feel like school at the weekend. Benefit, picked up cheap out of curiosity mainly because it was there, seems to support this theory. It arguably lacks the manic energy of This Was, and those Open University maths modules were beginning to make themselves felt in the composition, but it hasn't yet turned into something with which to beat listeners over the head. They had spent a lot of time on tour in the US with Led Zeppelin and the like, and the influence of this excursion is felt in songs turning out extra-English. We still have something of the influence of jazz, blues, folk and the rest, with everything blended so finely as to have become its own flavour with occasional Renaissance frills taking us outside the usual 4/4 expectations and a mix that serves to remind that it wasn't always about sheer volume. It's an unmistakably English sound with few traces of Chuck Berry, and not just English, but specifically the rural English of haystacks, birdsong, hedgerows, woolly jumpers in the pissing rain, and pubs which have been in business at least since the crusades. Even if it gets a mention, there's not much trace of London Town to be found, and it leaves me feeling weirdly nostalgic for my childhood which felt very much like this album in some respects.
Everything you hear on this record would be developed further into ever more ornate conventions until the element of soul had been reduced to an equation which only worked because Ian was right there in front of the microphone telling you how important it was and so insisting you shut up and pay attention; but on Benefit it's still fresh, sparkling in both sun and rain, reviving the spirit and reminding us of what matters in this life.
Remember Englishness? Having moved to the US some fifteen years ago, it's not anything to which I give much thought, but fuck - it's wonderful to experience music so honest, so free of artifice, with such a good heart, that reminds me of how England felt without needing to push down on anyone, without any weird parochial agenda, without some fat skinhead twat from Surrey (off the top of my head) fog-horning on about this week's scapegoat.
Given previously stated reservations about this lot, it's lovely to discover I was wrong.
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