Pentangle

Solomon's Seal is the last album recorded by the original Pentangle: Jacqui McShee, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Danny Thompson and Terry Cox. It came out in September 1972 on Reprise, and in the autumn of that year the five played what became their farewell tour. This deluxe edition sets the album beside the BBC, film and concert recordings of that final year.

The album was recorded at Sound Techniques in London and produced by the group with John Wood, who also engineered the sessions. The credits spread the instruments wide. Renbourn plays electric and acoustic guitars, sitar, recorder and harmonica, Jansch acoustic guitar, banjo and dulcimer. Thompson is on double bass and Cox on drums and finger cymbals, and McShee, Jansch, Renbourn and Cox all sing. Of the nine tracks, four are traditional songs arranged by the five members and four are originals credited to the whole group.

The one song from an outside writer opens the album: Cyril Tawney's Sally Free and Easy. The traditional side of the record includes The Cherry Tree Carol, High Germany and Lady of Carlisle, which closes it, while the long Willy O'Winsbury runs to almost seven minutes. The group's own songs are The Snows, People on the Highway, No Love Is Sorrow and Jump Baby Jump. The first disc then adds a Bob Harris Sounds of the 70s session for BBC Radio 1, with five songs from the album and Fair Flower of Northumberland. It continues with the music for On Any Day, a 1972 Shell Film Unit documentary, and Renbourn's own Willy O'Winsbury from his 1971 album Faro Annie. The second disc collects recordings from the final tour, at Guildford Civic Hall on 10 November and St Albans Civic Centre on 27 October 1972, among them Cruel Sister, She Moved Through the Fair and Reynardine. It ends with two excerpts from the 1972 soundtrack for Christian the Lion.

Reviewing this reissue in the Morning Star, Kevin Bryan recalled that the album first appeared to a fairly muted critical and popular response, and found it well worth investigating for the guitar work of Renbourn and Jansch, McShee's voice and Thompson's double bass. He judged the two-CD set, with its BBC and farewell tour bonus tracks, "an essential purchase for Pentangle completists everywhere".

Double CD in a six-panel digipak on Cherry Tree (Cherry Red), catalogue number CRTREE029D, released in October 2025. Compiled by Colin Harper and newly mastered by Eroc, it comes with a 28-page booklet with notes by Harper and Mick Houghton.