A reprint from the Weber Mandolin blog published May 3, 2020, authored by Michael Eck.
Lady Moon with her Weber sopranino.
On November 27, 1970, British folk rock paragons Pentangle released their fourth album, Cruel Sister. The title track, a haunting meditation on an ancient Northumbrian murder ballad, was tinged with sitar from fingerstyle master John Renbourn and graced with a mournful, exquisitely detached vocal from London chanteuse Jacqui McShee.
Fifty years later, on March 24, 2020, Lady Moon posted a YouTube performance of the song, funneling history down through the ages, and, directly inspired by McShee and company, through the decades.
In the mesmerizing clip, Lady Moon begins, too, with fingerpicking, a hypnotic pattern underpinning her own equally haunting meditation. She's playing a 22"-scale mahogany-backed Weber Bitterroot octave mandolin, and when she digs in with the pick, the rendition begins to take on a certain thunder. At the midpoint, it just explodes, with notes and double stops pouring out of the instrument in a flurry worthy of Pentangle's late Bert Jansch or his brilliant contemporary
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