Bert Jansch Albums (28)
What The Critics Say
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. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
The couple of years leading up to the release of Edge of a Dream found Bert Jansch getting hip again, with former Suede man Bernard Butler and British guitar hero Johnny Marr singing his praises. Butler's on board for this album, but so is (surprisingly, perhaps) Hope Sandoval. For anyone familiar with Jansch outings like 2000's Crimson Moon, there are few surprises. A fair number of new compositions are featured, such as the title track and "All This Remains," but also some old songs like "I Can't Keep from Crying Sometimes" and Richard Fariña's "Quiet Joys of Brotherhood," both of which play to Jansch's strengths. He's not the world's greatest singer by any stretch of the imagination, but he's developed his own quiet way of putting a lyric across. The guests tend to be reverent, as if they're gathered around the feet of the master (which, considering Jansch was recording before they were born, is apt), with the pointed exception of Dave Swarbrick, whose career has been as long as Jansch's (as is Ralph McTell's, whose harmonica work is very graceful), and whose fiddle work is wild and rapturous, a counterpoint to the more contained, shaded styles of the others. It's a carefully arranged record, subdued overall. Jansch himself is never flashy on the guitar (even when he ventures, unusually, onto electric), but he doesn't need to be -- he proved everything years ago. The man is class. ~ Chris Nickson, All Music Guide
'Downunder: Live in Australia'
Release Date 5/8/2001
Tracks 15
Label Castle/Windsong
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What The Critics Say
Live is perhaps the best way to hear Bert Jansch, to be dazzled by the quality and assurance of his guitar work as well as his way with a song. After what seemed like a long time in the wilderness, he'd found his musical path again in 1996 with When the Circus Comes to Town and Live at the 12 Bar. Recorded two years later, this sounds so much more confident than either of those releases, the music of a man who'd not only recovered his form but was back at the top of his game -- you only need to hear the picking behind the voice on "She Moved Through the Fair" to understand that. There's very little duplication of material between this and the Live at the 12 Bar release, which relied heavily on '60s classics. With a few exceptions (and yes, his signature tune, "Angie," is included) like "Blues Run the Game," the emphasis here is very much on newer songs from When the Circus Comes to Town and the just-issued Toy Balloon. There are even two brand-new pieces, the whaling song "My Donald" and the instrumental "Downunder," which wouldn't make it onto a studio recording for another couple of years, in addition to "Little Max," which remains unavailable elsewhere. Pete Howell offers some excellent and intuitive support on double bass, although whether percussion should have been there (it's on three tracks) is debatable, since it was added after the fact. Jansch hasn't put out many live albums during his long career, but releasing this was an excellent decision. It captures the mellow vibe of a warm Australian evening but, more importantly, it finds Bert Jansch sounding better than he had for years, and makes it easy to understand why he's considered a giant of guitar and folk song. ~ Chris Nickson, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Bert Jansch was 60 years old and celebrating the 35th anniversary of his first album when Crimson Moon was released in 2000, and although many critics termed it a comeback set, it was essentially Jansch doing what he has been doing all along, with a few embellishments. Like every other Jansch album, Crimson Moon centers around his amazing acoustic guitar playing and his limited, but disarmingly natural and sincere sounding vocals, and if having Johnny Marr and Bernard Butler along on electric guitar made it seem like this was a major change of direction for Jansch, it really wasn't, since Marr's and Butler's contributions are mostly atmospheric and non-intrusive. Jansch is doing here what he always does. He sings about being on the road, tackles a traditional ballad or two, works in some blues, and plays the acoustic guitar with the sensibility and touch of a jazz horn player. Highlights include the opening track, "Caledonia," the title tune, "Crimson Moon," an ambient take on the Appalachian murder ballad "Omie Wise," and covers of Robin Williamson's "October Song" and Guy Mitchell's "Singing the Blues." Jansch's son Adam plays bass on a couple tracks here, while his daughter Loren sings the lead vocal on "My Donald." Crimson Moon is not so much a return to form for Jansch as a continuation of it, and his many admirers will find this album to be wonderfully familiar. ~ Steve Leggett, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
The fact that Bert Jansch continues to produce superb records more than 30 years into his career is proof not only of his talent, but of his longevity, and Toy Balloon follows up on the excellent When the Circus Comes to Town to show that his touch -- both as a writer and guitarist -- remains sure. "She Moves Through the Fair" is a traditional piece that's been tackled by almost everybody, but in his hands it becomes beautifully meditative and hypnotic, the perfect lead-in to the gentle love song "All I Got." And that, in turn, makes a nice foil for the title cut; written for a little girl, its lyrics are perfect for a young one. It's certainly notable that the best tracks on the album are those Jansch performs solo. He has great backing, including former Dire Straits man Pick Withers on drums and the legendary Pee Wee Ellis on sax (who gets to shine on "Just a Simple Soul"), but where it's all Jansch, as intimate as sitting in his living room, the album comes most alive. He doesn't need to make his guitar work flashy, he has nothing to prove, and he knows his voice is far from a perfect instrument. But he can still make each song an evocative experience, as on Jackson C. Frank's "Carnival." Above all it's the sound of someone who's not only come to terms with his life, but it happy with himself, and able to look outside to his dreams of Erin on "Born and Bred in Old Ireland." With the new outlook, his writing has continued to mature, and take a quantum leap for the introspection, and frequent self-pity that categorized Jansch's '80s work, it's hard to believe he could have written something as carefree as "Sweet Talking Lady" before, for example. But Toy Balloon shows that, not only can someone return to form, but continue from strength to strength. ~ Chris Nickson, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
This official bootleg is a recording made at the legendary 12 Bar Club, a hot spot for British folk revival artists, and Bert Jansch is certainly one of the premier artists of the genre. With time, Jansch's guitar playing has only improved upon his unique finger-picking style, which baffled all in the heyday of his Transatlantic label debut. Jansch is peerless in his consistency of making astonishing records, and his performances in the studio are always animated and lively -- true documents of his art. Where other artists seize the studio or dabble in over-production, Jansch has always been dogmatic in his pragmatist approach. Hence, this live recording is a fantastic representation of his outstanding ability. Few others can step on a stage and perform a set as compelling as the one documented here, and he thrives in the live context. Old staples are given the familiar Jansch treatment, which involves not so much playing the songs as rewriting them on the spot, one could say. On that particular day, Jackson C. Frank's "Blues Run the Game" and the traditional ballad "Curragh of Kildare" were given particularly haunting treatments by the Scotsman's baritone. Jansch originals stand taller than ever, and most fans will agree that the traditional arrangements he does may as well be his compositions -- as it is his hand that brings them so to life. ~ Sylvie Harrison, All Music Guide
'When the Circus Comes to Town'
Release Date 1/1/1995
Tracks 14
Label Cooking Vinyl
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What The Critics Say
Bert Jansch was 52 when this CD came out in 1995, and at that point, he was revered as an elder statesman of the British folk community (although the veteran singer/songwriter is actually Scottish, not English). Jansch's brooding, introspective, bluesy style of folk-rock had not grown stale over the years--When The Circus Comes To Town, in fact, is the work of an artist who was having no problem maintaining either his vitality or his charisma. The influential Jansch has long been admired for his storytelling abilities, and his performances on such selections as "The Lady Doctor from Ashington," "Living in the Shadows," "Walk Quietly By" and "No One Around" demonstrate that in 1995, he remained as compelling a storyteller as ever. When The Circus Comes To Town is a welcome addition to Jansch's sizable catalogue. ~ Alex Henderson, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
As Colin Harper points out in the liner notes, Bert Jansch has sometimes been viewed as folk hero from yesteryear. He argues that Jansch has continued to be an important voice in contemporary folk, and that The Ornament Tree, recorded in 1990, is worthy of his early-to-mid-'70s work. While it may be a stretch to compare it to a great album like 1973's Moonshine, there is little doubt that Jansch continued to be a vital artist. The overall sound of The Ornament Tree is quite uniform, filled with Celtic fiddles and flutes, and the song choices are a nod toward tradition. Ballads like the title cut and "The Rambling Boys of Pleasure" tell tales of lost love and warn of the pitfalls of roving, while "The Dreamers" is a wistful salute to the romantics of the world. The evocative "The Mountain Streams" conjures up the magic of a forest and a mysterious love, of two strangers who meet, part, and agree to meet again in another season. Jansch is in good voice throughout, and his guitar work is excellent as always. The supporting players provide sympathetic accompaniment and top-notch solo work throughout the album. Two instrumentals, "The Rocky Road to Dublin" and "Lady Fair," have been included. The first features the lovely fiddle of Peter Boyle and the latter, the superb whistle playing of Maggie Boyle. The production by Michael Klein has taken the rougher edges from the acoustic instruments, smoothing out the overall sound. This approach gives the album a more contemporary feel. For Jansch fans, or for those who love good acoustic music with a Celtic twist, The Ornament Tree will be a satisfying album. ~ Ronnie Lankford, Jr., All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
With 13 cuts, this is very good. ~ Chip Renner, All Music Guide
'Leather Launderette'
Release Date 1/1/1988
Tracks 11
Label Black Crow
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