Once I Had a Sweetheart begins with a gentle rocking motion between acoustic guitar and bowed bass. Jacqui comes in with the title as first line. Congas and non-rock percussion enter and the song builds. No middle eight nor gear-changing chorus, just the ghostly nightmare of a lost love sung sweetly. Then an instrumental takes over and we notice that we've already been hearing a tambura drone. We notice that because the sitar comes in with a poignant solo that sounds like longing. When The vocal re-enters for the final verse it is set deep in ethereal harmony, the final line "after I'm gone" echoing into the fade.
Springtime Promises begins with a guitar figure in a similarly jazzy mode to the opening track and proceeds to sound like the most conventional song so far. Sung by its co-composer Bert Jansch, it tells of the change of the seasons both literally and figuratively as people respond to their own changes. Busy but light percussion and Danny Thompson's masterful bass playing match Jansch's acoustic mastery.
Lyke Wake Dirge freezes from the first with a Gregorian whispered three part harmony telling of the soul's journey from the darkness of death through purgatory. If it sounds old with all them thees and mayests it should. Even though its refrain of "and Christ receive thy soul" is every fourth line that is considered an interpolation of a pre-Christian funeral dirge. We are going way back in time. This is a little like ghost stories for me: I don't believe but I still like the eeriness. It sounded like a spell and not a good one.
Train Song continues the jazzy course of Light Flight and Springtime Promises with a rhythm suggestive of locomotion in the guitar and McShee's scat song descant. Jansch's vocal about the pain of leaving his love has an exhausted pain in it. The descant pouring over it in a breakdown feeling like balm. The lyric contains the album title and compares love to a kind of surreal trap. The track and side end with Thompson bowing his bass with a stuttering spiccato that rises through to an uneasry harmonic that might suggest a retreating train whistle or a troubling idea of a soul rising into dissipation.
Hunting song begins with a delicate and creepy glockenspiel and a percussive double bass played high on the fingerboard. Jacqui comes in with a tale as a traveller who sees a medieval hunting party with a Revelation-like ten kings and queens. After a brief instrumental break the vocal melody begins phase B with a cascading variation of the first section with the double bass edibly echoing the vocal descents. The narrator, at a low emotional ebb witnesses a scene between two of the hunting party and then we hear their dialogue, Jacqui as the lady and Bert Jansch as the knight. She has a magic horn which compels the truth. She means it as a gift for the king. The knight has a jape in mind, though. Another busy but delicious acoustic instrumental and then we are into section C with a more stately melody. The traveller reaches a castle where the lord and lady are bidding farewell to each other as he heads off battle. Before we have taken note of it we have been propelled by a rhythm section of bass and congas. The medieval setting has become almost Latin jazz. This comes to a head and returns to 1232 with a gorgeous and wordless round of male and female voices in a minor mode. Bert takes up the end of the story as the warrior returns to find his life undone by the magic horn with its fatal truth. Jacqui assumes the final lines as the traveller or perhaps something more omniscient to pronounce a death by dark arts.
This song is set in a terrifying pre-Raphaelite painting where medieval figures seem to wander in woods made of dark matter. See my earlier comment about ghost stories. I think I had read Alan Garner's folk horror novel The Owl Service not too long before hearing this. I fuse them both in my memory. There is both a luxury in the music and a coldness in the tale that tie a knot of scowling horror. I loved and was scared by this song.
The folky jazz of Sally Go Round the Roses serves a pallet cleanser after the epic Hunting Song. The arrangement loosens the pulse of the Jaynettes version. The vocals come and go, interweaving like someone haunted by thoughts that cannot be shaken. This might be a lazy afternoon shot at an oldie but it still gets to me.
The Cuckoo brings the glockenspiel back out of the prop room to add an iciness to the traditional song about constant birds and deceitful lovers. After an instrumental featuring some tasty acoustic guitar and bass interplay the song repeats with the verses in reversed order. That made me think of the use of reversed actions in spells and - Maybe The Owl Service was still on my mind.
House Carpenter begins with a banjo and Jacqui singing the first lines about marrying below her station. Bert Jansch comes in as a smarmy tempter. The woman leaves her young family for adventure on the ocean wave. The ship goes down and she drowns longing for her simple life, her husband and children. And then she stands in front of bright hills which she takes for heaven until disabused by her tempter who explains that it's actually hell. The band below gains breadth with tambura, sitar, bass and drums. The final scene in hell is delivered acapella by McShee before her last yearning futility sinks into a tide of banjo and sitar which play to the fade.
Much later, when I was able to piece it together, I marvelled at how producer Shel Talmy who had made The Kinks and The Who sound so boxy had developed in a very few years to produce this wonder of blended styles. There is just nothing wrong with this production.
I heard this album in the holidays that divided primary from high school. It was a different kind of graduation. My sister Anita who was into all things medieval borrowed a copy from her friend Penny (whose collection also boasted the best cast recording of Jesus Christ Superstar and an original mono Revolver) and we listened to it in the rumpus room as the sky dripped monsoonal tears without.
It was olde worldey enough for me to tolerate and never got too close to rock music for me to worry about impurity. And its tales of dark deeds set in imaginative arrangements with frequently breathtaking vocal arrangements captured my Hammer horror mind. I drew pictures of ancient intrigue, death beds haunted by masked figures bearing candle sticks.
The music itself bore such character as offered mystery with every play. The hillbilly twang here, eastern drone there and some of the most intricate guitar interplay were a revelation. I was slowly coming around to the idea that there was some music made after the eighteenth century that I could like (and some of the source material here predated that limit by centuries itself).
Also, both Anita and I shared a surprised smile at hearing the very first track of this record. Light Flight was the theme of a great little UK series about three young women sharing a house at the end of Swinging London. You can Youtube it but if you do you might struggle through the pacing and theatrical dialogue and performances but at the time it felt grown up. The theme version is shorter, unaccompanied and has different words but the connection was thrilling.
I bought my own copy in the eighties when I saw it had been re-issued on vinyl. More recently, I got it as a DVD-Audio with a big surround mix. It still works as music without nostalgia. I can't hear an old Sherbet or even a Queen song without opening a room in the mid seventies wing of my recollection. But this ba bu budoodah opens a window and sunlight and fresh air come in.
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