Review Summary: Bert Jansch's debut album, whether directly or indirectly, captures an intimate moment in time without trying to explain itself. It revels in the mystery that surrounds it, and it's perfectly satisfied leaving many questions unanswered.
The folk revival stirring in the fifties spilled into the sixties like an orgasm, resulting in the birth of many young kids with guitars acquiring record contracts and releasing records in the first half of the decade. Their observant, sometimes personal lyrics layered over an array of fingerpicking patterns derived influences from baroque to blues. The obvious example here is Bob Dylan, followed by Donovan, Phil Ochs, Jackson Frank, and somewhere in-between was Bert Jansch. Each of these fellows have something special to offer. You’ll find yourself mesmerized by Donovan’s playful melodicism, Frank’s crushing loneliness, and Dylan’s undeniable presence. So what’s left to be said about Bert Jansch?
The answer lies in his aptly titled debut album. All fifteen tracks were recorded in some dude’s house, played on a borrowed guitar and sold to Transatlantic Records for £100. There’s not much else to know about the recording of the album, since no amount of information will part the mysterious aura of the album that surrounds it like thick smog. I may as well go on to state the line about this album being perfect in its imperfection, but is that not a cliché at this point? Of all the music I’ve heard you could say that about, this album obsesses me the most. I hang somewhere between rating this four-and-a-half and five stars; not necessarily in-between either.
What motivates my rating is how anxious I get listening to the rhythmic breaths weaving between the fingerpicking on “Finches” and “Veronica”. The guitar-playing on this album eludes me, the way it finds some middle-ground between the baroque and blues influences present in the folk scene. As if you didn’t see the final track “Angi”, you can tell Jansch has listened to Davy Graham, but he resolves a cadence by bending a string just the way a blues man would.
I also focus on the reverb that fills the silence in “Needle Of Death”. I’m imagining Jansch playing this track about heroin in this guy’s kitchen as if it were some off-hand casual performance. The off-tune strings pervade the track with the occasional muted or missed note every other measure. Don’t get me wrong. Bert Jansch is undoubtedly my favorite fingerpicker, and likely as a guitarist overall. Jimmy Page and Neil Young will back me up on that.
Much like the drifter personality that exudes in “Strolling Down The Highway”, this album seems to drift from track to track. And this album has quite a few sketches on it that somehow feel as developed as they can be all things considered. Comparing “Alice In Wonderland” to “Smokey River” and then to the other tracks I’ve mentioned up to this point will reveal completely different textures. At the same time, I can hear a pattern forming in these tracks, bordering dangerously on repetition, but barely holding together. It feels as if this album would crack at any moment.
All these ingredients combine and form the most intimate album I’ve ever heard. The recording in itself creates that atmosphere, but the performances are alluring, and the songs worth learning. Wherever the aura of this album actually is, in some enclosed space perhaps, the only constant is the plucked guitar. The voice here is in and out, undoubtedly developing in creative direction. I’m not sure Jansch knew these tracks would be an album. The magic of capturing an artist in a precise moment in time can result in something magical, as it does here.
