Pentangle
Cruel Sister

THE REVIEW

Folk between rigorous Anglo-American tradition and jazz experimentation: this is Cruel Sister (1970), the fourth album by Pentangle, founded in 1967 by the Scotsman Bert Jansch and the Englishman John Renbourn, to which the extraordinary vocalist Jaqui McShee and jazz musicians Danny Thompson and Terry Cox would join. If the previous work, the excellent Basket of Light, is the group's greatest success and probably their milestone, Cruel Sister seals their full creative, stylistic, and especially technical maturity. The Pentangle throw open the doors to jazz, while maintaining a moderate inclination towards acid blues. Instruments such as the dulcitone and sitar are used, and the electric guitar is introduced for the first time, a pleasant and sudden twist since it was customary for the band to rely only on acoustic instruments, a decidedly unconventional choice for that era of frantic electricity.

Acoustic ballads taken from the traditional English, Scottish, and American repertoire compose the first part of the album, ancient songs that invoke stories of love and death, ordinary everyday life, epic texts, sometimes gruesome and dark. And Jaqui McShee gives her best, her sweet and crystalline voice, incredibly in tune and confident, is a serene source of pleasure for the ears and fragrant balm for restless hearts and minds, a true prima donna in all the tracks, also engaged in a solo a cappella singing.

But it is in the second part of Cruel Sister that the group showcases all its creativity and skill. With "Jack Orion" (of which there are three different versions) it can be said that the Pentangle reach that peak that many folk-rock groups of the time probably only dreamed of touching. "Jack Orion" is a suite of about 18 minutes, divided into 3 parts, that reprises a folk song; it talks about a musician, music and its magical influence, and a fatal case of mistaken identity. Delightful arpeggios, the voices of Jaqui and Jansch chasing each other in obsessive chants, drums and bass with a decidedly swing rhythm characterize the first and third sections, while the excellent central part is introduced by the dreamy and melancholic clear sound of the dulcimer, vibrant, ethereal, and delicate, masterfully accompanied by a lively Danny Thompson on the double bass, only to explode into acidic electric distortions, to whose listening it's hard not to go into ecstasies, a phenomenal jam of rare technique and mastery.

In conclusion, Cruel Sister is an album excellently played and stylistically original, and it can only be reproached for a certain repetitiveness in the first part; but this is the typical case where it's not the "what" but the "how" that matters, the point is not the lyrical aspect, therefore, but how the tracks are (divinely) performed.

Terry Cox: Drums, Percussions, Tambourine, Dulcitone, Triangle
Bert Jansch: Guitar, Vocals, Concertina, Dulcimer
Jacqui McShee: Vocals
John Renbourn: Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, Sitar, Vocals
Danny Thompson: Double Bass