ONE MORE ROAD

The last Pentangle studio album featuring the great Bert Jansch, One More Road is a fitting swansong. Fully recovered from severe illness due to alcoholism, Jansch is once more the band's star songwriter. Add that to the growing songwriting talents of vocalist Jacqui McShee and lead guitarist Peter Kirtley, and you have some stellar songs to place on an album. "Traveling Solo" and "One More Road" being the standout original songs as they're about what the band knows best, performing on the road with its numerous ups and downs, fulfillments and disappointments. Kirtley supplies an esoteric song of longing called "Endless Sky", which seems to endlessly get stuck in one's head. Drummer Gerry Conway is allowed to step out a bit on percussion and adds spice to the pseudo native song "Somali".

Where the album suffers is the band's desire to include a few traditional songs for old times sake. "High Germany" and "Willy O' Winsbury" were resurrected from the out of print (at the time) album Solomon's Seal. Done in a brezzier rock style, they pale in comparison to the original recordings. Still, the album is a worthy finale. 3.5 stars rounded up to 4.