Before acoustic guitarists Burt Jansch and John Renbourn formed Pentangle, before their hybrid of folk with jazz and rock reshaped the way people heard all three genres, before Joanna Newsom and Ryley Walker and The Decemberists could claim them as an influence, John Renbourn put a few tracks down on tape. Renbourn, who passed away in March at the age of seventy, recorded the songs collected on the recently released The Attic Tapes several years before his collaboration with Jansch began. The recordings were then stowed away in a friend’s attic, where they sat collecting dust while Renbourn and Jansch’s collective work went about its business.
“Anji” is The Attic Tapes‘s opening track, a cover of a song frequently performed by Renbourn’s early recording partner Davy Graham. It’s a frenzied, tense take that finds Renbourn alone on acoustic guitar, thumping the song’s bass notes into a shape that almost resembles Cab Calloway. He strings together a few Latin lines, some country twang, flirts with lyrical American primitivism, and trills his way out of trouble. It’s virtually a lesson in western guitar styles played out in just under four minutes. Check it out below.
The Attic Tapes is out now on Riverboat.
