Review
Now this really is a switch: Scottish guitar hero and songwriter Bert Jansch (Pentangle) recording for Drag City, with a host of admirers in tow -- Beth Orton, Devendra Banhart, Noah Georgeson (who performed and co-produced with Jansch), Helena Espvall, son Adam Jansch, and more. Black Swan is a collection of original and traditional tunes. Jansch
turns in a performance that shows his typical restraint, and within it
his wonder as a guitarist. His use of the blues, American, Celtic, and
British Isles folk forms is also informed by music from Eastern Europe,
and he ties them all together seamlessly. "High Days," a solo track,
uses all three, as he winds out an elegy for a friend. "When the Sun
Comes Up" begins with Orton's vocal and David Roback's slide guitar and Otto Hauser's drums, shuffling underneath. Jansch spills it modal and bluesy, Orton
grabs onto his changes and effortlessly lets her voice wrap around his
lyric lines. Her signing on the traditional number "Katie Cruel" has
been brilliantly rearranged by Jansch. Banhart sings in a muted duet with Orton,
but his vocal was unnecessary. It's a spooky track that's been prepared
for by the preceding cuts. The slippery Piedmont blues style Jansch
tucks into his British folk on "My Pocket's Empty" is evocative of an
earlier, simpler time, though as revealed by the tune, times were hard
then, too. Jansch's singing is at its most expressive here; he's moaning in his reedy baritone. Orton makes one more appearance here on the gorgeous and-all-too-brief arrangement of the blues tune "Watch the Stars." Hers and Jansch's
vocals take the tine out of the song's Southern American birthplace and
brings it into the world, one grainy line at a time. It's a singalong
blues that reveals the sheer expanse of the universe in the grain of
their voices. Ultimately, this disc is not so different from Jansch's
others, but it is wonderfully spirited and loose. It feels live, and
backroomish. It's as informal a date as one can find among superstars --
and make no mistake, you may or may not know his name, but his large
catalog proves it -- Jansch
is one. As for the rest, the hardscrabble dirty, slide guitar-drenched
English folk of "A Woman Like You" rings as true as a Texas blues love
song by Lightnin' Hopkins.
Traditional public domain nuggets such as "The Old Triangle" are almost
radically reworked and ring spookily true for the current era. The
blues-rock of the humorously political "Texas Cowboy Blues," complete
with keyboards and popping acoustic 12-strings, shimmies and even shakes
in places. The last few cuts, a gorgeous instrumental called
"Magdalina's Dance," and "Hey Pretty Girl" (performed solo), are
drenched in historical tropes, but are thoroughly modern and soulful.
The bottom line is this: for the past ten years Jansch has been undergoing a creative renaissance akin to Bob Dylan's and people are slowly but surely finding what he has on offer. Black Swan
proves that the guitarist and songwriter has a bounty at his disposal.
He is writing and recording music that is profound, funny, topical,
worldly, and ultimately, necessary.
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