Customer Reviews

Pentangle

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Pentangle`s debut album was hugely influential in its amalgam of folk, blues, jazz, driven by a flurry of creativity, witnessed in the instrumentals on the album, like "Bells". Jacqui McShee is in top form on this album, using her strong voice more or less like an instrument. It is one of the mysteries of popular music how she later became your ordinary folk voice. The interweaving guitar lines of Jansch and Renbourn are the stuff of legend, and the sheer inventiveness of their playing together on this album has seldom been equalled. But Danny Thompson`s double bass is a secret weapon on this album, drawing influences from Mingus and Ron Carter into the folk idiom, to produce bottom lines of power and beauty, making "Thyme" much more than an aulde folk song. To me, it has been one of the most important albums of all time, and Pentangle never equalled on later albums the freshness and originality they displayed on their debut.

This is Pentagngle's first album, and it sounds like it. It is short, stark and the musical range is limited. The CD is 33 minutes long. There are 7 songs and 1 instrumental. Most of the songs are just over 2 minutes long.

The is minimalist music. Sometimes it will be just a single acoustic instrument, just playing a simple rhythm, with no emotion. Jaqui MacShay's voice is flat. As the group matured on later albums, the music would become much richer and there would be more depth to the songs. My favorite album is Basket of Light.

There is a newer version of this album with 6 bonus tracks that add 20 minutes to the disk. The bonus material is better than the original, with the group showing more emotion and much more fire to the vocals.

I have them all and i have to tell ya that SWEET CHILD and CRUEL SISTER are the ones to get. No b.s. on these dics.Only straight true music.No pop wanderings{not that thats bad!}The first albums can't touch these two

Pentangle's first album was quite a revelation to all who heard it in 1968. The group's personnel were already individually well known in the club and sessions scene in Britain, but here was a case where the whole became internationally greater than the sum of the parts. They became the first of the great folk-rock string bands, and the most artistically interesting. There still is no one to quite compare them to, as they attempted to combine folk, blues, jazz, and classical sounds. This album is their leanest and most essential; everyone gets to take the spotlight individually as well as collectively, the music is entirely acoustic, and everyone is in top form.