T**he Attic Tapes is a 20-song archival hodgepodge cobbled together from early recordings of the late British guitarist John Renbourn, who died in March. Renbourn sourced the core of the tracklist from a tape labeled "1962" that he discovered in the attic of fellow folk revivalist Mac MacLeod, pairing those few songs with various onstage collaborations from his salad days, before he and his guitar-sparring partner Bert Jansch and their band, Pentangle, helped redefine the scope of modern folk. Renbourn had yet to sign a record deal, so these takes are rough with their age and his youth. But the finale, a live duet with Davy Graham of "Nobody Knows You When You’re Down Out", is pristine, with the thin, lithe tone of the dual guitars rendered perfectly. Had Graham and a teenaged Renbourn somehow stolen into a proper studio back in 1962?
Actually, their Clapton Unplugged-like take on the American standard comes from an onstage rendezvous several decades after the heyday of the British folk revival. As a memento, it is quite poignant. Not only did Graham serve as a de facto mentor to Renbourn, but the younger guitarist opens this set with a hurried version of "Anji", one of Graham’s trademark numbers. But as a set-closer, it’s a bit of a bore, the sound of two old friends romping through the blues for their own amusement but without much payoff.
Alas, that makes it a fitting close for The Attic Tapes, a tedious if spirited set that lets us hear Renbourn learn where folk and blues had been rather than guide where it might go. It raises more questions about archival albums than it answers of Renbourn’s genesis.
The Attic Tapes mostly confirms what we already know about Renbourn and, really, the bulk of his motley crew of fellow crooners and pickers: They loved the rawness and magnetism of American blues and folk music, and they tried the best they could to recast it in their own image. There are a few originals here, like the halting and smart blues reordering of "Plainsong" and the peppy "Judy". But mostly, Renbourn plainly shows his roots. He turns Blind Boy Fuller’s doting but vaguely threatening "Little Woman You’re So Sweet" into the sprightly "Beth’s Blues". Like most every other pasty kid with a piece of carved wood and some strings, he works his way through Blind Willie Johnson’s "Lord I Just Can’t Keep From Crying". He flits between the notes and lifts and leaps with his voice in a way that suggests he’s celebrating his own vulnerability, a young man not old enough to know how painful it all could get.
Likewise, Renbourn’s take on "Portland Town", by itinerant and largely overlooked American banjoist Derroll Adams, seems to delight in tragic lyrics about bad marriages and dead children. And his cover of Jackson C. Frank’s perfect anthem, "Blues Run the Game", is overly emphatic, the verses brandished with unwarranted relish. It’s clear that Renbourn is an incredible guitarist, capable of making intricate patterns seem effortless even at such a young age. His jejune takes on these hard old songs suggest that he was, to date, simply an instrumentalist short on experience.
If you’re worried that The Attic Tapes is an opportunistic ploy to profit from Renbourn’s recent death, like a youthful journal published without the deceased author’s consent, don’t: Renbourn seemed enthusiastic about this project, even penning playful and informative liner notes that trace his lineage and sources more clearly than the recordings themselves. According to Riverboat Records’ owners, Renbourn died the day before they would have sent him the final artwork; he never had a chance to dig deeper for exact dates on these sessions.
Aside from its redundancy, though, the real worry with The Attic Tapes stems from the way it reflects reissue-and-archival culture at large. Though many labels interested in such work do essential excavations of forgotten sessions, albums and artists, there seems to be an increasing tendency to regard most anything that’s survived as a masterpiece—as though time transformed it like common carbon into a rare diamond. Everything presumed to be lost doesn’t need to be found. The situation seems doubly pronounced when the music involves an artist we already know—or, in the case of The Attic Tapes, a panoply of them.
In some way, I wonder if our relatively new era of seemingly instant and infinite information about what our favorite singers had for breakfast or where they’re vacationing and with whom has made the salvage of such basement reels and attic tapes seem more paramount, as though we’re retroactively rebuilding as much of the past as we can. That’s an intriguing endeavor, but it doesn’t necessarily make for essential records. During his 50-year career, Renbourn contributed to several of those, from Bert and John and The Pentangle to The Black Balloon. This makeshift reliquary—perhaps the final release in which Renbourn had a hand—is not among them.
