Pentangle

There was a stretch of time, between the late Sixties and early Seventies, when the British folk revival managed to seep into rock culture, perhaps with Bob Dylan acting as the bridge between the two worlds (worth remembering that the bard dominated the charts in Britain far more than at home). It was an exhilarating back-and-forth of influences across the Atlantic.

So it happened that the Incredible String Band's "The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter" found success in the spring of 1968. Then it was the turn of Fairport Convention, who achieved flattering results starting with "Unhalfbricking", and of Pentangle, whose third effort, "Basket Of Light", saw the light of day in October 1969. Thanks to the single "Light Flight", used as the theme for the BBC's landmark series "Take Three Girls", the album climbed all the way to number 5. It would take Lindisfarne's "Fog On The Tyne", unjustly forgotten today, for anyone to sell more.

This isn't, however, a scene that's easy to pin down. The Incredible String Band blended psychedelic folk with medieval music and ethnic influences, Fairport Convention electrified Celtic folk while looking towards America (Dylan, but also Jefferson Airplane), as did Lindisfarne (leaning more towards Simon & Garfunkel). These were very different bands, often with elements utterly alien to one another.

Pentangle stood out above all for the refined fingerstyle technique of their two guitarists, John Renbourn and Bert Jansch, retrospectively dubbed folk baroque, a style capable of merging traditional British melodies with American innovations like blues, jazz and ragtime. The rhythm section, too, drew equally on folk and jazz, with Terry Cox on drums and Danny Thompson on double bass. Telling was their choice to forgo an electric bass, aligning themselves instead with the acoustic guitars. This raises legitimate questions about how accurate it really is to label Pentangle a folk rock band, as they so often are. Looking closely, they only used electric instruments starting with "Cruel Sister" in 1970, while there's no trace of them on the earlier records.

On the other hand, their music was so innovative that it's hard to call it simply folk: consider, for instance, the frequent use of sitar, which, despite being acoustic, was borrowed from psychedelic-era rock music. Of this there's absolute certainty, since neither Jansch nor Renbourn (already long active as solo artists) had ever used the Indian instrument before it was introduced into rock. And it's certainly not just a matter of the sitar: it's the whole arrangement that gives the songs a dynamism unheard of in traditional British folk, making Pentangle's music something modern and unconventional.

The icing on the cake was Jacqui McShee's voice, whose angelic, weightless timbre seemed to anticipate the muses of the dream pop era to come, blending superbly with those of Jansch and Renbourn to create a marriage of shades and harmonies with an arcane, mystery-laden flavour, yet lively enough to speak to the same audience swept up in the rock revolution.

"Basket Of Light" remains their most representative album and their greatest creative achievement, preferable to the excellent "Cruel Sister" for the fact that half of it is made up of original material, whereas its successor would limit itself to reworking traditional ballads (loosely speaking, given that they turned the ballad "Jack Orion" into an eighteen-minute behemoth).

The opening track is the aforementioned "Light Flight", a perfect fusion point of folk, pop and jazz, with a contagious rhythm probably inspired by Dave Brubeck's "Take Five". Unlike its source, the track flits from one time signature to another as if it were the most natural thing in the world: 5/8 and 7/8 in the verse, 6/4 in the chorus. It's masterful how the verse's bubbling metre, built from two odd-numbered modules, manages to feel natural and immediate, hiding the trick inside an even sum.

McShee's graceful vocalizing, overdubbed into multiple lines and reinforced by her bandmates' counter-melodies, immediately conjures an enchanted atmosphere from which, as mentioned, somewhat fairy-tale figures like Elizabeth Fraser and Kate Bush would draw more than a few lessons.

"Once I Had A Sweetheart" derives its melody from a 16th-century English ballad, "A Maid Sat A-Weeping", but uses the lyrics of a later variant, likely of American origin. Pentangle's rendition employs an arrangement of twelve-string guitar, glockenspiel and sitar, delivered with mystical emphasis by McShee and driven by a rhythmic pulse as hypnotic as a music box.

“Springtime Promises”, sung by Jansch, boasts a guitar solo that straddles the border between Indian raga and tavern blues, while the rhythm section works like a fine crochet stitch, between Cox's brushed drums and Thompson's double bass, a sort of Charles Mingus in Celtic guise.

“Lyke-Wake Dirge” is an old English poem about the journeys of souls in the afterlife. Its origin is unknown (it was transcribed in 1686, but it's assumed to date much further back, considering the text itself, with symbols from the pre-Christian era). No definitive melody has survived for it, so there exist quite different interpretations of the piece. Pentangle opt for a minimal accompaniment: the tambourine, double bass and guitars are barely audible, while over everything looms the gothic-cathedral choir of Renbourn, Cox and McShee. McShee, in particular, seems to take on the guise of a priestess, her voice rising to immerse the song in a state of divine, visionary ecstasy.

“Train Song” is one of the boldest originals, with its constant shifts in tempo, intricate acoustic embroidery, and the contrast between Jansch's stern voice and McShee's abstract vocalizing. Yet it's Thompson who steals the show, his double bass first venturing into near-onomatopoeic flourishes, then, in the coda, dissolving into a cacophonous drone.

“Hunting Song” and “The Cuckoo”, respectively an original and a traditional piece, are once again marked by grandiose instrumental accelerations, confirming both the eccentric arrangements (glockenspiel, hand drum) and the band's ability to steep any folk song in a kind of spiritual trance.

“Sally Go Round The Roses” is a reworking, tinged with Celtic tradition and acoustic blues, of a classic rhythm & blues tune, originally released by the vocal group the Jaynetts in 1963. As usual, on one hand you can tell it's modern pop music, on the other you're left with the suspicion it's centuries old.

Closing the album is “House Carpenter”, an American variation on the traditional English “The Daemon Lover”, in which the devil himself returns to an old lover to steal her away from her new husband. The arrangement for sitar and banjo, an almost tribal rhythm, and McShee's usual celestial presence turn it into a ride thick with tension.

Unfortunately, the lack of notes on the recording sessions prevents us from describing Shel Talmy's creative role in the control room. There's no reason to doubt his importance, however, given that his résumé includes the likes of Kinks, Who and Manfred Mann, all of whom found their way onto the charts under his direction.

Today the legend of Pentangle may have somewhat faded in absolute terms, but it's ready to re-emerge in all its splendor whenever someone decides to reopen the treasure chest that was that golden season of British folk.

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10/02/2019