Thick as a Brick 2

Thick as a Brick 2, abbreviated TAAB 2 and subtitled Whatever Happened to Gerald Bostock?, is the fifth studio album by Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson, released in 2012 as a sequel album to Thick as a Brick, Jethro Tull's 1972 parody concept album. It entered the Billboard chart at No. 55.

Thick as a Brick 2
Studio album by Ian Anderson
Released	2 April 2012[1]
Recorded	March 2011, November 2011
Genre	Progressive rock
Length	53:45
Label	Chrysalis/EMI Records 50999 6 38726 2 0 F2-38726
Producer	Ian Anderson
Ian Anderson chronology
Ian Anderson Plays the Orchestral Jethro Tull (2005) Thick as a Brick 2 (2012) Homo Erraticus (2014)

Concept overview

According to Anderson, TAAB 2 (which he pronounces /tæb ˈtuː/) focuses on Gerald Bostock, the fictional boy genius author of the original album, forty years later. "I wonder what the eight-year-old Gerald Bostock would be doing today. Would the fabled newspaper still exist?"^[2] The follow-up album presents five divergent, hypothetical life stories for Gerald Bostock, including a greedy investment banker, a homosexual homeless man, a soldier in the Afghan War, a sanctimonious evangelist preacher, and a most ordinary man who (married and childless) runs a corner store; by the end of the album, however, all five possibilities seem to converge in a similar concluding moment of gloomy or pitiful solitude.^[3] In March 2012, to follow the style of the mock-newspaper cover (The St Cleve Chronicle and Linwell Advertiser) of the original Thick as a Brick album, an online newspaper was set up, simply titled StCleve.

Reception

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[4]
PopMatters	5/10[1]
Sputnik Music	4.0/5[5]

AllMusic gave three stars to the album, calling it: "cleaner and streamlined, not as indulgent or idealistic as [Anderson's] younger work, boasting a more sensible structure, yet it still bears all of his signatures from the flute to rambling folk-rock".^[6]

The album debuted at No. 55 on the Billboard chart, at No. 13 in the German Albums Chart,^[7] at No. 12 in the Finnish Album Chart,^[8] at No. 19 in the Austrian Album Charts,^[9] at No. 30 in the Norwegian Album Charts,^[10] at No. 31 in the Swiss Album Charts,^[11] at number No. 74 on the Canadian Albums Chart,^[12] at No. 35 on the UK charts,^[13] at No. 76 in the Dutch Album Chart^[14] and at No. 99 on the Spanish charts.^[15]

Live performances

Main article: Thick as a Brick - Live in Iceland

Anderson performed the entire album live on tour in 2012.^[16] In August 2014, Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson released CD/DVD/Blu-ray Thick as a Brick - Live in Iceland. The concert was recorded in Reykjavík, Iceland on 22 June 2012 and featured complete Thick as a Brick and Thick as a Brick 2 performances by the Ian Anderson Touring Band.^[17]

Track listing

The original Thick as a Brick consists of only two long tracks comprising a single song, while TAAB 2 lists 17 separate songs merged into 13 distinct tracks (some labelled as medleys), although also all flowing together much like a single song.

All tracks are written by Ian Anderson.

No.	Title	Length
1.	"From a Pebble Thrown"	3:05
2.	"Medley: Pebbles Instrumental / Might-Have-Beens"	4:21
3.	"Medley: Upper Sixth Loan Shark / Banker Bets, Banker Wins"	5:41
4.	"Swing It Far"	3:28
5.	"Adrift and Dumfounded"	4:25
6.	"Old School Song"	3:07
7.	"Wootton Bassett Town"	3:44
8.	"Medley: Power and Spirit / Give Till It Hurts"	3:11
9.	"Medley: Cosy Corner / Shunt and Shuffle"	3:37
10.	"A Change of Horses"	8:04
11.	"Confessional"	3:09
12.	"Kismet in Suburbia"	4:17
13.	"What-ifs, Maybes and Might-Have-Beens"	3:36
Total length:		53:45

DVD

The 2-disc edition includes a DVD-9 with the following contents:

• Audio:
  • 5.1 Surround Mix
  • Super Quality 24-bit Stereo Mix
• Video:
  • TAAB2 "The making of" Video
  • Studio recording sessions, interviews and more
  • The Lyric Reading Video (Anderson)
• DVD-ROM:
  • Multilingual Lyric Translations (pdf files)
  • www.StCleve.com Web Pages (pdf)

Personnel

Musicians

• Ian Anderson – vocals, flutes, acoustic guitars
• Florian Opahle – electric guitar
• John O'Hara – accordion, Hammond organ, piano, keyboards
• Pete Judge – trumpet, flugelhorn, tenor horn, E-flat tuba
• Ryan O'Donnell – additional vocals
• David Goodier – bass guitar, glockenspiel
• Scott Hammond – drums, percussion

Production

• Steven Wilson – mixing engineer
• Mike Downs – recording engineer
• Ian Anderson – liner notes
• Peter Mew – mastering engineer

Charts

Chart (2012)	Peak position
Billboard Top 200[18]	55
Top Rock Albums[18]	18
UK Albums Chart[19]	35
Hungarian Albums Chart[20]	2

See also

• Thick as a Brick
• Thick as a Brick - Live in Iceland