Band seems lost here, hence I'm gonna say that this is very underwhelming album. Not the worst album ever, but close

Thinking about it, maybe the band needed to change their sound at some point, since it had been pretty similar for a long time. I'm not against change and I appreciate JT for having balls to try this change, unfortunately it didn't succeed at all IMO.

One of the worst albums I have ever heard in my life. Not a big fan of their better albums either except for the mighty Thick as a Brick, but this is downright disgraceful garbage. It's like a bad parody of a commercialized 70's prog band, but sadly for all I know they were serious. I can barely accept the fact that an arserape of ears like Under Wraps really exists in any shape or form, either Ian Anderson must have had the worst time of his life making this or the record company people were just coked out of their minds.

This album is awful! It just never made any sense to me I tried listening to it again for the first time in ages, hoping that maybe I might warm to it, but nope To me it seems like the band had simply ran out of steam, and lost the plot at this point, and desperately needed to change direction.

Written by AndyMetalFreak on 31.01.2022 at 08:28

This album is awful! It just never made any sense to me I tried listening to it again for the first time in ages, hoping that maybe I might warm to it, but nope To me it seems like the band had simply ran out of steam, and lost the plot at this point, and desperately needed to change direction.

It's not that they lost the plot, a change was often forced for a lot of 70s bands/musicians. It rarely worked and in case of Under Wraps it didn't. People didn't want to hear a drum machine in Jethro Tull first of all.
I really enjoy their next album though which makes me think Under Wraps was just a phase (Anderson also did an album full of 80s synths in 1983), an experiment gone wrong.

Written by John_Doe on 31.01.2022 at 08:39

It's not that they lost the plot, a change was often forced for a lot of 70s bands/musicians. It rarely worked and in case of Under Wraps it didn't. People didn't want to hear a drum machine in Jethro Tull first of all.
I really enjoy their next album though which makes me think Under Wraps was just a phase (Anderson also did an album full of 80s synths in 1983), an experiment gone wrong.

I guess your right most bands go through this phase, often they release an album that just simply doesn't work well, but then they move on and produce something better next time. This was their lowest point imo and they improved on this.