Rosemary Lane - BERT JANSCH***

Tell Me What Is True Love/Rosemary Lane/M'Lady Nancy/A Dream A Dream A Dream/Alman/Wayward Child/ Nobody's Bar/Reynardine/Silly Woman/Peregrinations/Sylvie/Sarabanda/Bird Song

Although Bert Jansch remained a member of the prominent British folk group Pentangle he continued to release his own solo albums. Rosemary Lane was the last of these before his band split up.

“This is nearly all-acoustic, and it might be his most gentle and heartbreakingly sad record ever. There's a dreamy, hazy vibe to much of the music that creates a timeless feel; by which I mean that it actually seems to stop time. I don't think Jansch ever topped his vocal on Tell Me What Is True Love, and it goes without saying that his guitar playing is superb.”

“Jansch has improved upon the one common fault, his voice, and undergone a subtly radical reworking of his style. No more accompanists, bitter dread or emotional distance - just a dewy, mannered calm, flexible enough for undertones tragic, smitten and serene.”

“I would call him a creative genius. His acoustic guitar arrangements sound at first oddly foreign, somehow reconfiguring the patterns in your brain, to change into the most natural and complete compositions you've ever heard. His lyrical style exactly compliments what he plays on guitar, and he comes off as a very convincing storyteller.”

“It's my absolute favourite of Jansch and maybe of the genre even. It's so slow, so humble. It keeps quiet as if it were listening to the listener's sorrow instead of telling about its own. Jansch's renditions of the title song and Reynardine are stunning. They sound so timeless in their melancholy.”

“Rosemary Lane finds Bert Jansch getting back to basics. In this case that means playing his guitar without any added orchestrations. These recordings are so basic that you can hear his fingers rubbing the strings of the guitar. Jansch is one of the great acoustic guitar virtuosos of his generation, equally comfortable playing the blues, American folk music or, as is largely the case here, the more traditional music of the British Isles.”

“A very overlooked and underrated acoustic gem made at a point when folk music was going almost entirely electric. It was thrown together very quickly, yet the performances exude heavy thought and meditation.”