Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hidden treasure, January 2, 2003
By A Customer
I only knew Pentangle from a single song from a compilation (Will the Circle Be Unbroken) and decided to buy the LP in a second-hand shop. I've been a big fan since, maybe the biggest one in Spain since their records or re-issues are impossible to find here. Jacqui McShee's voice is absolutely stunning and the whole side two of the old LP is marvellous even with its more-than-30-years-old noise.
There are only five songs, all of them from old traditional British lore: A Maid That's Deep in Love surprises the listener with a very mellow folk sound taken from an electric guitar (Pentangle's previous sound was acoustic). When I Was in my Prime shows the true genius of Jacqui's voice without any musical accompaniament; I don't think any pop singer of the 90s could ever attempt this and sound soooo great! Lord Franklin is the only song featuring lead vocal by Jansch: he was a good singer but cannot match hers, good on its own. Then comes the hypnotic Cruel Sister whose tale puts you at the verge of crying... Finally, all of side B is reserved for a +18 minute rendition of Jack Orion, that I think is the crowning achievement of their career: I have never heard anything remotely similar in style and structure, it might be defined as progressive, jazzy folk but it needs to be heard to believe it. In one word, a masterpiece.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A childhood memory, January 30, 2002
I first listened to this album when I was a little girl. I was then absolutely fascinated by the Middle Ages, and still am... it was really a wonderful discovery for me, and this is now one of my must-haves. The adaptation of old popular songs is excellent and with the singer's sweet voice, you want to be somewhere in England in the fourteenth century. A jewel.
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19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Odd but kinda cool, June 12, 2004
It's big break from the three albums that came before, but this is still a pretty cool folk-rock album. For one thing, this is folk music as it should be: a little weird and twisted.
The opening track is your standard girl-dressed-as-a-boy-to-follow-her-true-love ballad, in this case as a cabin boy, but it does contain a rather disquieting moment when the ship's captain says to his cabin "boy" "I wish you were a maid, your rosy cheeks your rosy lips, they are enticing me". It's a standard moment in songs like this but the fact that it happens on a ship at sea, and knowing what went on during these long voyages, it adds a nice hint of pederasty-you wonder if maybe the captain has used this line on other cabin boys.
In the title track the psychopathic cruel sister drowns her nice sister and mocks her as she goes down, telling her she's going to steal her true love. Two minstrels find the drowned sister's body and use the bones and hair to make a harp (hey, an artist must work with the materials at hand). You can imagine what happens when they play the harp for the sisters' father.
And Jack Orion, the epic that took up a whole side of the LP, is a great example of a murder ballad-or rather, a rape-murder-double suicide ballad. Charming stuff.
This is largely Renbourn and McShee's show. It's the first Pentangle album without a Bert Jansch song, and he only sings on one song, although that song is the epic Jack Orion (which originally appeared on one of his solo albums). Still, even on that song he shares the lead with McShee. And the sensibility here is much more like Renbourn's solo work--I think The Lady and the Unicorn came about the same time as this recording.
The first cut is classic Pentangle-nice, aggressive interplay between the instrumentalists, with Renbourn playing tastefully amplified electric guitar, but it's marred a little by McShee somewhat mannered singing-she didn't sing like this on previous Pentangle records so I'm not quite sure why she changed her style.
The second song, When I Was In My Prime, is an a cappella turn by McShee, and it's just fine, really, but it's hard not to think of other, more talented singers who've done similar things, like Jansch's old girlfriend Anne Briggs, or Shirley Collins (two favorites of mine). McShee just doesn't have a particularly strong or interesting voice-in fact, there's a rumor that bassist Danny Thompson's old girlfriend Sandy Denny was passed over for the Pentangle vocalist job because they were afraid her voice was too strong.
The next song, Lord Franklin, is in some ways the biggest departure, a lament for a lost sea captain and his gallant crew sung by Renbourn, with the dominant instruments being concertina and acoustic and electric (quietly electric) guitars. In this case, Renbourn's mediocre voice actually helps give the song a feeling of wistful authenticity-he sounds like a regular bloke, not a professional singer.
Some people have found the title track a little irritating, particularly the "Lay the bent to the bonny broom/fa la la la la la la la la la" refrains (no, I don't know what that bonny broom stuff means) and Renbourn's odd attempt to sing what almost sounds like a countertenor harmony with McShee, but it does feature Renbourn on sitar, something I've always liked (although I think it's used to greater effect on Basket of Light).
Then there's Jack Orion, Pentangle's Dark Star/A Sailor's Life. They throw everything into this one. It starts out much like a regular Pentangle tune, with Jansch singing and playing acoustic guitar. He swaps the lead with McShee, although unfortunately Renbourn does that countertenor thing behind her again. The tempo picks up, even gets a little frenetic, for the rape, and then they break into a stately sorta Morris dance-sounding bit dominated by recorder and bowed bass, very haunting and dramatic, for the first suicide, followed by a jam featuring Terry Cox's dulcitone (sounds like a glockenspiel to me) and Renbourn kicking out the jams on his electric ax, certainly the rockingest Pentangle had played to date (I don't have their last two albums so I don't know where they went from here). Then it quiets down for the murder and suicide that end the song.
It is an odd album, but to me an endearingly odd one. You get the feeling that Pentangle listened to Fairport Convention's Liege and Leif and thought, hey, we could do something like that.
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