PENTANGLING

Released in 1973, "Pentangling" is a compilation of nine songs from Pentangle's first five albums. As they split the year this was released, it effectively served as an epitaph, with only the previous year's "Solomon's Seal" not contributing any songs.

Pentangle's music is a strange concoction of blues, folk and jazz, and "Pentangling" gathers together all these styles into a coherent package. Primarily based around the twin acoustic guitars of Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, the line up on all the tracks here, and in fact until they broke up, remained the same.

The tracks are presented in apparently random order, starting with the blues based "I've got a feeling" from "Sweet child". This rather unrepresentative, almost lounge like piece demonstrates Jacqui McShee's pure vocals well, exploiting her jazz roots. The only other track from the 1968 "Sweet child" is the traditional folk song "The trees they do grow high", otherwise known as "Lang a-growing". This story based song has strong similarities with the type of music FAIRPORT CONVENTION would soon make with SANDY DENNY.

With only nine tracks in total, it is interesting that the band's penultimate album "Reflection" is afford space for three of its tracks. Of these, the traditional "Rain and snow" is the best, with a very effective sitar accompaniment to a pleasant folk song giving a quasi Hari Krishna feel.

Two tracks are taken from what was arguably Pentangle's best album, "Basket of light". Neither of these is their most famous song, "Light flight". Instead we have the wonderfully haunting "Like wake dirge", an ancient, almost gothic, piece and the deceptively simple "Once I had a sweetheart". This American variant of a traditional English folk song called "A maid sat a-weeping" gives Jacqui McShee another chance to show what an under appreciated voice she has.

The only track from "Cruel sister" is "A maid that's deep in love", a traditional song which feels like is comes from an area not far from Bert Jansch's Glasgow origins. The album is completed by the 7 minute eponymous track taken from the band's first album. This song delves deeper into the band's jazzier side, with a heavy accent on the double bass of Danny Thomson.

In all, a worthwhile introduction to the band.

The sleeve illustration is rather original, being an image of a five sided (pentagonal) LP record, complete with grooves and track listing on the label. It even had the traditional Transatlantic label characteristic of the logo on one side, and the track information for both sides on the other. Strangely though, the LP did not actually have this.