Bert Jansch - 'L.A. Turnaround' (Charisma)

Our last solo Bert Jansch record brings a change in label and a change in tone. If the title doesn't give a hint, this has a strong American flavour, with a West Coast country-folk vibe, further accented by Mike Nesmith's production on some of the tracks. Some of the tracks were recorded in Paris, but most in Sussex, which makes the album's theme a bit misleading. Yet the back cover is adorned with a collage of photos of Jansch hanging out in proper American fashion among bars and with people wearing cowboy hats. Now, I'm not someone who feels that country music (or any genre) is some sacred thing that you can only perform if inherited by birthright - after all, the Mekons are probably my favourite band - so I don't begrudge Jansch for trying this. It really works, the combination of his fingerpicking style, soft voice and the genteel bounce of country music. On the more stripped down tunes, such as 'Travelling Man', there's the same flowing harmony found in his earlier work, though with a pedal steel giving it the necessary flavour. His vocal melodies are likewise influenced by American music - I can't imagine how 'Stone Monkey' would sound with Renbourn and/or Pentangle backing it - but it's a music built out of appreciation, the obligatory 'goes country' record that everyone has in them. The pedal steel is actually a great combination, though I think I'm generally fond of that instrument. It doesn't sound anything like Heather Leigh's playing on the Jailbreak record we recently reviewed, but more of the classic sound. 'Needle of Death' is revisited with this accompaniment,  suggesting that by this point it had already emerged as Jansch's most iconic number,  and surely relevant to the drug-addled 70s – though I find this version rather lacking in urgency. The cadence is altered to let the song breathe a bit more, but it loses the hook, and one feels like Jansch is maybe tiring of the number by this point. But this may be L.A. Turnaround's only misstep, as the rest of the record flows nicely, working perhaps as a complement to Nesmith's own country-rock output in that decade. When there's a bass/drums rhythm section behind the songs, they are usually light and rolling, keeping the emphasis on the folk feel. 'Open up the Watergate (Let the Sunshine In)' I assume is literally about the political scandal (this was 1974 after all) and isn't without its charms. This is the last Jansch record I own, and I see the follow up is called Santa Barbara Honeymoon so I suspect it's also of the American flavour. Not just anyone could probably slot into this aesthetic so easily and it could feel like a vacuous commercial gesture in lesser hands, but the one consistent thing over all of these albums is how steady those hands were.