Customer Rating: 
Summary: Pentangle Get Witchy
Comment: Sometimes a sound just captures your imagination and carries you along with it, and Pentangle definitely does that for me. Even their questionable artistic moments are part of a constant search for some lost key in the murky depths of ancient music, matched with the spirit of jazz improvisation and Eastern touches. Although most listeners don't consider this album their best, I have a special fondness for it. Another reviewer mentioned that some of the vocal harmonies are a bit off, but for me it just adds to the wonderfully spooky atmosphere. "Lord Franklin" is one of my favorite Pentangle tracks because it creates a wistful effect attributable more to performance than lyrical content. Renbourn's vocal delivery, though hardly a technical marvel, is perfect for the song. (Dylan based "Bob Dylan's Dream" from FREEWHEELIN' on this traditional tune.) As for the "Lay the bent to the bonnie broom" refrain in "Cruel Sister," I found this in a Google search:
"holly and ivy, used magically from the earliest heathen times, holly being particularly abhorred by witches in England and other countries of Europe; broom, most potent against witches and spirits, and per contra, often used by witches in their spells; the bent or rush, protective against the evil eye, and, as Miss Broadwood points out, doubly powerful when combined with the broom, as in the refrain (1 A), 'Lay the bent to the bonny broom.'"
Just a bit of white magic, you know.
Customer Rating:
Summary: AGELESS,CLASSIC,DEEP,WONDERFUL
Comment: If you are even a passing fan of PENTANGLE,this disk is a must have.At the
time I write this review,Amazon is not offering us the chance to use a
media player to audition this disk.What a shame this may cause you to
miss one that I believe would become a household favorite.I am tasking myself to convince you to take a chance here.Every song on this disk has
the crisp,tight outstanding musicianship and soaring vocals of Jaquie Macshee (not sure of the spelling)--AND an added double bonus.The final
track on this album,"JACK ORION" is a twenty two minute epic that should
be mentioned as a classic along with any Led Zepplin or Fleetwood Mac song
that gets constant airplay.This tune alone is worth the price.You will not regret this expendtiture of you hard earned entertainment $.GIANT,VERY OBSCURE YUMMY MUSIC.NOT TO BE MISSED!
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Favorite
Comment: This is one of my favorite albums. If you like Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention, you'll love this. The import version is of superior quality too. This is one of the discs I would take to a desert island.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Odd but kinda cool
Comment: It's big break from the three albums that came before, but this is still a pretty cool folk-rock album. For one thing, this is folk music as it should be: a little weird and twisted.
The opening track is your standard girl-dressed-as-a-boy-to-follow-her-true-love ballad, in this case as a cabin boy, but it does contain a rather disquieting moment when the ship's captain says to his cabin "boy" "I wish you were a maid, your rosy cheeks your rosy lips, they are enticing me". It's a standard moment in songs like this but the fact that it happens on a ship at sea, and knowing what went on during these long voyages, it adds a nice hint of pederasty-you wonder if maybe the captain has used this line on other cabin boys.
In the title track the psychopathic cruel sister drowns her nice sister and mocks her as she goes down, telling her she's going to steal her true love. Two minstrels find the drowned sister's body and use the bones and hair to make a harp (hey, an artist must work with the materials at hand). You can imagine what happens when they play the harp for the sisters' father.
And Jack Orion, the epic that took up a whole side of the LP, is a great example of a murder ballad-or rather, a rape-murder-double suicide ballad. Charming stuff.
This is largely Renbourn and McShee's show. It's the first Pentangle album without a Bert Jansch song, and he only sings on one song, although that song is the epic Jack Orion (which originally appeared on one of his solo albums). Still, even on that song he shares the lead with McShee. And the sensibility here is much more like Renbourn's solo work--I think The Lady and the Unicorn came about the same time as this recording.
The first cut is classic Pentangle-nice, aggressive interplay between the instrumentalists, with Renbourn playing tastefully amplified electric guitar, but it's marred a little by McShee somewhat mannered singing-she didn't sing like this on previous Pentangle records so I'm not quite sure why she changed her style.
The second song, When I Was In My Prime, is an a cappella turn by McShee, and it's just fine, really, but it's hard not to think of other, more talented singers who've done similar things, like Jansch's old girlfriend Anne Briggs, or Shirley Collins (two favorites of mine). McShee just doesn't have a particularly strong or interesting voice-in fact, there's a rumor that bassist Danny Thompson's old girlfriend Sandy Denny was passed over for the Pentangle vocalist job because they were afraid her voice was too strong.
The next song, Lord Franklin, is in some ways the biggest departure, a lament for a lost sea captain and his gallant crew sung by Renbourn, with the dominant instruments being concertina and acoustic and electric (quietly electric) guitars. In this case, Renbourn's mediocre voice actually helps give the song a feeling of wistful authenticity-he sounds like a regular bloke, not a professional singer.
Some people have found the title track a little irritating, particularly the "Lay the bent to the bonny broom/fa la la la la la la la la la" refrains (no, I don't know what that bonny broom stuff means) and Renbourn's odd attempt to sing what almost sounds like a countertenor harmony with McShee, but it does feature Renbourn on sitar, something I've always liked (although I think it's used to greater effect on Basket of Light).
Then there's Jack Orion, Pentangle's Dark Star/A Sailor's Life. They throw everything into this one. It starts out much like a regular Pentangle tune, with Jansch singing and playing acoustic guitar. He swaps the lead with McShee, although unfortunately Renbourn does that countertenor thing behind her again. The tempo picks up, even gets a little frenetic, for the rape, and then they break into a stately sorta Morris dance-sounding bit dominated by recorder and bowed bass, very haunting and dramatic, for the first suicide, followed by a jam featuring Terry Cox's dulcitone (sounds like a glockenspiel to me) and Renbourn kicking out the jams on his electric ax, certainly the rockingest Pentangle had played to date (I don't have their last two albums so I don't know where they went from here). Then it quiets down for the murder and suicide that end the song.
It is an odd album, but to me an endearingly odd one. You get the feeling that Pentangle listened to Fairport Convention's Liege and Leif and thought, hey, we could do something like that.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Pentangle's masterpiece, with exceptionally clear sound
Comment: Though overshadowed by Sweet Child and Basket Of Light, the dreamy, melodic beauty of "Cruel Sister" stands as the high point of Pentangle's exploration of the fusion of folk with jazz and rock elements.
Adding electric guitar for the first time to the already ethereal atmospheres of Basket Of Light, though many fans did not appreciate it, makes Pentangle's sound much deeper. This was clear from the way in which the voices and instruments interweave on the epic "Jack Orion", which actually never gets boring owing to the fact that the sections do not repeat: they vary with guitars, voices, recorders many times. The title tune was almost as dreamy as Laura Nyro's "Brown Earth", even if built from a quite different story.
On the other side, McShee's amazing voice was never better seen than on "When I Was In My Prime", which despite being a capella, still is recognisable as Pentangle. It is most refreshing to se McShee allowed so much space especially with the sharp remastered sound, and on "A Maid That's Deep In Love", she sang perhaps even better: reflective yet never despairing, romantic yet never sentimental. "Lord Franklin" was even more subtle than the other songs, yet the electric guitar's melody ought to surprise those used to the more folksy "Sweet Child". Indeed, the remastered sound allows one to see how they both complement and supplement each other in a remarkable manner.
On the whole, an atmospheric masterpiece matching almost anything in its era, rivalling Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and Moondance, Tim Buckley's Lorca and Happy Sad, Steeleye's Hark! The Village Wait and Laura Nyro's Christmas And The Beads Of Sweat.
Pentangle adopted an even more electrified style on the equally brilliant Reflection the following year, but that proved to be the end of their best days. "Cruel Sister", though, still should be heard.
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