LPCDreissues: Looking forward to the past

Released in 1967 at the height of the Summer of Love, Nicola would become Bert Jansch's fourth solo album. For Jansch fans, Nicola was a surprising evolution. Gone was the stark brooding acoustic minimalism of his first three releases, and in its place a fifteen-piece orchestra with Jansch, for the first time on twelve-string and electric guitar. The album, named after his girlfriend at the time, gave Jansch (usually the lone wolf) his first taste of creating music as a member of a greater whole, and in some ways must have led to his decision to leave his solo career behind for his new group, Pentangle. Rather than staying in the formula that had made him one of the first folk artists to sell out stadium size venues, Jansch's creative impulse was forcing him to leap forward into the great unknown and the result was Nicola.