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Bert Jansch is a guitar superstar and one of the prime movers of the British folk revival of the '60s. Originally from Scotland, his early club dates in London amazed listeners with his dazzling blend of blues, jazz and British and American folk styles. His first solo albums influenced everyone from Jimmy Page and Neil Young to Nick Drake, Johnny Marr and more recently Devendra Banhart and Beth Orton. Pentangle, the folk super group he founded with John Renbourn, Jacqui McShee, Danny Thompson and Terry Cox in the late '60s, created their own unique niche, part folk, part jazz, part acoustic psychedelia, driven by the masterful fretwork of Jansch and Renbourn.
At 63, Jansch is still a technical master, known as much for his restraint as for his jaw-dropping technique, and he's still making vital, highly original music. Black Swan was recorded primarily at Jansch's home studio, then tarted up with guest shots by some of his youthful admirers. Producer Noah Georgeson (Joanna Newsom's The Milk-Eyed Mender, Banhart's Cripple Crow) keeps things stripped down and basic; Jansch's guitar and world-weary vocals remain on center stage, still marked by his casual charisma and effortless virtuosity.
Almost every track here's a charmer, especially if you tend to direct your feet to the gloomy side of the street. "Katie Cruel," a children's nonsense song, usually given a bouncy delivery, is transformed into a spooky dirge with Barnhart and Orton providing defeated harmonies to compliment Jansch's medieval picking. "My Pocket's Empty," written by Clive Palmer of the Incredible String Band, is another cheerless tune, made even sadder by Jansch's disconsolate guitar and exhausted vocal. Musically "High Days" is a beautiful British folk blues full of chiming notes and lingering overtones; lyrically it's both an apology and a put-down of an old lover, the kind of emotionally ambivalent tune Jansch is so good at. "Bring Your Religion" is a prayer for the planet and its inhabitants with a beautiful melody and Jansch's subtle organ work, but his worn-out vocal suggests that he doesn't hold out much hope of his prayer being answered.
The only up tempo tune is "Texas Cowboy Blues." It's also the only clunker, a trite anti-Bush tirade with obvious lyrics that have nothing new or particularly insightful to say.
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