Bert Jansch and John Renbourn were legendary guitarists on the British folk circuit, taking in far wider ranging influences, and themselves spoken of in whispered awe by today’s modern rock guitar heroes. Together with double bass player Danny Thompson, drummer Terry Cox and singer Jacqui McShee they formed Pentangle in 1977.

Folk, slightly folk rock, maybe even progressive rock were all tags they got haphazardly filed within, if you weren’t into such music then you’d probably never heard that them. Despite which, you’d probably know ‘Last Flight’ if someone played it you, not necessarily because you’re ancient enough to remember it as theme tune to the Liza Goddard Take Three Girls comedy series, or as single itself, just that snippets of it get played on TV again to fast track you to a time that was.

Successful, if only in terms of always having plenty of work, they were however individualists and split initially around 1973. Various permutations resurfaced intermittently over the following decades, the founding members reconvening to critical acclaim from 1982 on for selective events and tours, encompassing the songs found across this 4 CD collection of BBC recordings.

Disc One takes in 1982’s Cambridge Folk Festival, recorded for the BBC World Service, a BBC 2 Six Fifty-Five Special from the same year, Later with Jools Holland appearances from and Cambridge Folk Festival Highlights on BBC Radio 2 from 2011. That’s a lot of the music over a long period right there. That many of the songs are covered at each live performance on this and the other CDs, makes sense in the greater schemes for such intermittent reunions, but as far diverging arrangements, solo excursions, one performance being better than another, I still find that find to ratify. That there’s little that didn’t appeal, and I was initially reviewing from digital renditions simply counted as plus, not having to press buttons but soaking in overall atmosphere of their performances.

Disc Two features shows at Thiene and Milan in Italy, while on tour, and not having been released before will be of most interest to their long term fans. The final two discs are from the previously released Finale: An Evening With Pentangle, with cherry-picked performances from their 2008 UK tour.

Having heard less than a handful of Pentangle’s numbers, armed by interest more in their reputation in print, I was unsure what to expect – Their actual sound, McShee’s voice, all yes; pretty much as I expected, but any suspected half hour long innovative acoustic guitar duels, hefty jazz excursions and the like are not present. Rather what you get is a series of numbers, that while they may generally be categorised as folk more sufficiently are just songs, yes; often evoking countryside scenarios of times gone by but remaining rather timeless. The beauty is found with how the various personalities involved merge, exchanges musical ideas, and just generally listening to each other even as they meander happily off or with determined purpose pursuing their own personal creative agendas. The guitarists do this vocally alongside McShee too, though it’s her voice that I listen out for, and personally find more appealing than those more prominently known ladies who’ve been with the likes of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span.

That cumulative group synergy is present from the get-go with Disc One’s opening track ‘Train Song’, albeit an injury prevented Cox’s playing at the early shows. Bright and breezy acoustic guitars lay out lines that will have you picturing some cowboy flick of yesteryear but that imagery changes even as the pace picks up, bustling with urgent repetitiveness, McShee scatting alongside while one of the gents takes lead vocals, and you now envisage a smoggier England where the trains ran on time, mobile phones didn’t exist and you were left to ponder the humdrum of your life, enjoying those moments where you could. No escape, from the direction life’s taking you, but not always such a bad thing, as expressed in instrumental diversity offered at various points. As opening number, it offers a little drama with thrills on the side.

By contrast, Thompson’s bowed bass veers into the melancholy until the guitars come in where upon fingering his strings he underlies a delightful Elizabethan period styled piece over which McShee questions: “If I said I had a Lover would it break your heart in two?” that will have many responding yes. The duet sung ‘People On The Highway’ is timeless, enchanting, while the actual story of a highwayman that is ‘Sovay’ finds them in a more bolshy baroque manner, as McShee takes on the role of damsel held-up and possibly Renbourn, if not Jansch, play the protagonist.

‘Bruton Town’ comes across as classic folk in narrative and form save the ever exploring guitars that are an absolute delight while never grandstanding and obscuring the tune, even as the track takes on an instrumental form some four minutes in, moving through folk, a little jazz and blues before returning to song form in the last minutes of this seven minute plus classic, for such it is as evidenced by the large applause following its conclusion. ‘I’ve Got a Feeling’ evokes a British summer of love hippy vibe with enough pop nuance to appeal beyond. Up-tempo, feel-good it casually branches out into some instrumental jazz, where Thompson’s playing proves a highlight.

From BBC’s Six Fifty-Five Special we get a familiar set of numbers, more pronounced with vocals up in the mix, and this particularly suits the rendition of ‘Sovay’. The BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards seem more subdued, but this in fact adds to the search instrumental dexterity during ‘Bruton Town’ and we get the first of several renditions of ‘Light Flight’ across this collection – It’s folk by virtue of its form, being a little classical too in the guitars’ unfolding notes, pop by its being so bloody catchy as it saddles sixties ideals while skipping through the early seventies, and also genuine jazz rock the way Thompson’s bass nudging in like a well-loved dog, and overall progressive in that music form’s original sense for the way it encompasses all so cohesively, and does so in under five minutes. Cox’s drumming moves aptly from military broad strokes to jazzier thrills on ‘Let No Man Steal Your Thyme’, a number still suitable as accompaniment for any Robert Louis Stevenson adaptation into film. The drummer’s touch is similarly felt during ‘Market Song’ despite it being quite traditional in its folk appeal, and again on a jazzy take on ‘I’ve Got a Feeling’ where McShee delivers a sultrier torch song interpretation. There are also TV appearances on Later with Jools Holland where familiar tracks continue to vary in the experimentation of their delivery.

Disc Two, recorded on tour in Italy, offers a broader selection of songs, though now familiar tracks like ‘Bruton Town’ refuse predictability during their instrumental soloing, while ‘Ragtime Tune’ is in fact that, courtesy of Renbourn, followed by a capella reading of ‘A Bold Young Farmer’ from McShee, there’s a totally different bass solo that opens If I Had a Lover’, and for those needing comparison of just how much Jimmy Page appropriated Jansch’s version there’s ‘Blackwater Side’, though bass lovers will simply be in thrall to Thompson’s playing on it. Mind you, among the new set songs, ‘Sweet Child’, bears uncannily melodic similarities to a certain Guns ‘N Roses number, and totally by chance, I’m sure. Whereas ‘Open Up The Watergate’ is rhythmically most interesting, rootsy with an ever inventive bass line, add an electric guitar on the offbeats and it could be reggae and the 12 and a half minute ‘Pentangling’ sees them veering off into a Cream-like improvisational state, and to good effect, or glorious if you’re a bass lover; the harmonic complexities Thompson delivers in a melodic manner being absolutely brilliant.

Traditional ballad ‘Cruel Sister’ and was the title track on their second album, released in 1970 the same year Cat Stevens based his own hit single, ‘Lady D’Arbanville’, on the music. The folk come sea shanty that is ‘Sally Free and Easy’, a tale of a siren-like lover who’d have you cast out on the rocks could so easily fit within the grooves of an early King Crimson or Procul Harum album, as too possibly could ‘Moonshine’ such is the near-atonal preciseness of the foreground guitar at times.

Discs Three and Four previously came out as the double live Finale: An Evening With Pentangle, featuring tracks recorded during their 2008 UK tour. Tracks news to these ears on the third CD are the mystical ‘Mirage’ sung by McShee as guitars probe with purpose, while ‘Hunting Song’ itself has an air of introspection, ‘Once I Had A Sweetheart’ hauntingly beautiful, being another another tale of doomed love, more giving is the jazzy ‘In Time’ featuring solos from all involved, while empirical raga-jig ‘House Carpenter’ is another doomed tale of forbidden love, with added sexual tensions.

The final album in this collection opens with the somewhat nonchalant ‘The Time Has Come’, ‘A Maid That’s Deep In Love’ is deliberated with courtly grace, while ‘The Snows’ sink deep in lyrical metaphor, guitars laced finely piercing and with rumbling orchestral percussion that’s subtle but evocative. Thompson leads a slow, purposely pondering take on Charles Mingus’ ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’ over which guitars spew out a delicate but purposeful bluesy reading of the signature melody. The blues continue as McShee sings ‘No More My Lord’ rather mournfully, whereas the Irish jig of ‘Wedding Dress’ lifts the spirits initially, then you realise the industrious descriptive approach to sewing is reciprocated by the weaving instruments, and as the singer deliberates over matrimony it’s as if the whole procedure seems an incantation inviting those from fairy realms to some midsummer night’s dream.

So very English, even in their appropriation of jazz and blues elements, Disc 4 concludes with ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken’. This old Stateside hymn’s never appealed to me previously, too earnest, far too much of a great white hope dreary spiritual number. Maybe I’ve just heard the wrong versions. Here, they seem to sink wholeheartedly into the American country heartland, guitars finger picking away, there’s an actual warmth and sense of grace to this I’ve not heard before. I’m still not sure if I actually like the song, or how often they performed it, but it’s a fitting conclusion thematically for this reunion.

You will fill a good part of your day listening back and forth to these records, but you’ll note the goodness in that comment and that it’s not intended for singular listening. There’s a quiet depth to this music, an understanding – intellectually perhaps but most intuitively too – as they perform as one, a unit, with never a bluffed note as far as I can tell. The songs themselves bear no fol-de-rol faux-folk silliness in their lyrics, rather those that are indeed traditional work because such universal truths that are sung age well. Both words and music imbue some of that complex spirit that is the English at heart, and it performed by excellent musicians, not in their own first flush of youth at the time of recording, and a number sadly no longer with us.

• Review by Paul H Birch.

• Reunions, Live & BBC Sessions 1982-2011 is released via Cherry Red Records and is available now.

Track List:

Disc One

1. Train Song
2. If I Said I Had a Lover
3. People on the Highway
4. Sovay
5. Bruton Town
6. I’ve Got a Feeling
7. Sovay
8. If I Had a Lover
9. Bruton Town
10. Light Flight
11. David Attenborough presents Lifetime Achievement Award to Terry Cox & Bert Jansch
12. Let No Man Steal Your Thyme
13. Light Flight
14. Market Song
15. I’ve Got a Feeling
16. Let No Man Steal Your Thyme
17. Light Flight
18. I’ve Got a Feeling
19. 19 Bruton Town

Disc Two:

1. Bruton Town
2. People on the Highway
3. Light Flight
4. Ragtime Tune
5. A Bold Young Farmer
6. Train Song
7. If I Had a Lover
8. Open Up the Watergate
9. Blackwater Side
10. Sovay
11. Sweet Child
12. Band Intros
13. Pentangling
14. I’ve Got a Feeling
15. Cruel Sister
16. Sally Free and Easy
17. Moonshine

Disc Three:

1. Let No Man Steal Your Thyme
2. Light Flight
3. Mirage
4. Hunting Song
5. Once I Had A Sweetheart
6. Market Song
7. In Time
8. People On The Highway
9. House Carpenter
10. Cruel Sister

Disc Four:

1. The Time Has Come
2. Bruton Town
3. A Maid That’s Deep In Love
4. I’ve Got A Feeling
5. The Snows
6. Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
7. No More My Lord
8. Sally Free And Easy
9. Wedding Dress
10. Pentangling
11. Will The Circle Be Unbroken