ROSEMARY LANE

Cutting against the grain of popular trends in folk music, whilst electric folk was at the high water mark of its fashion Bert Jansch put out this acoustic, classically-tinged album of much more traditional material, Captivatingly emotional, with an unabashedly romantic bent, there's a certain timelessness to the material here. With impeccable performance and production standards, and a complete independence from fashionable trends, the album sounds like it could have been made at any point in the last four or five decades - provided, of course, you had a Bert Jansch handy to pull off the heartfelt sincerity of the performance. Four stars sounds right.

Among the positives here, the production is by far the crispest of any JANSCH record up to that point, the choice of traditional source material is wise given the explosive popularity of FAIRPORT, STEELEYE and PENTANGLE among others, and both JANSCH's guitar and vocals have blossomed. The cost is in my chief criticism levelled at PENTANGLE as well - an almost android-like lack of emotion in the service of chill, or whatever that was called in 1971. He could be like the first court musician to say (somebody must have said it) "I'm not crazy about the job but hey it's a living". Compare the title cut to "When I was on Horseback" by STEELEYE, or "Reynardine" to that by the parent group and you might understand. For someone to sing about love so often and so poetically without apparently opening that heart seems like the consummate irony. I would like to award "Rosemary Lane" three stars but the absence of spice, let alone a track I ever need to hear again, forces my hand to hold up just a couple of fingers.