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.
Concept overview
According to Anderson, TAAB 2 (which he pronounces /tæbˈtuː/) 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.
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]
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.
