Jethro Tull

This album, which seemed so soft and lyrical in its original CD incarnation, comes to us with some surprisingly sharp edges in its remastered form -- the 24-bit audio allows us to practically hear the action on Ian Anderson's acoustic guitar and puts Barriemore Barlow's drums in the room with us, suddenly giving the whole album the texture of a live recording. Oddly enough, in the case of this album, the result is a roughening of many of the textures to go with closer presence of all of the instruments -- thus, Songs From the Wood ends up sounding a bit more like the Tull albums around it than it previously did. Of the two bonus tracks, "Beltane" is a harder-rocking song than anything on the original LP, while "Velvet Green" keeps to the pastoral mood of the existing album, with a very pleasant melody. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide