LIEGE & LIEF

This album begins another transition phase for the band's, as their influences drawn from 1960's popular folk music (Dylan & Cohen mainly) starts to flow deeper to spheres of more purist traditional folk music. After this album Sandy Denny also left for her solo career through a group Fotheringay, though would return for some live concerts and "Rising for The Moon" record in mid 1970's. My own focus was followed by her to the solo projects, and later Fairport Convention records still wait my interest's awakening. Own favorite tracks on this album are the ethereal "Reynardine", really fragile and beautiful "Farewell, Farewell" (to late Martin Lamble?) along with the jolly medley of four traditional tunes. I have not earlier been very keen to these traditional jigs & reels, but this performance has really good arrangements, and the songs of the medley switch really fluently and dynamically, making up an interesting song. Many other tracks have also good ancient and raw feeling, making this as a quite solid album, so if you liked the previous records done with Sandy, this is a worthy album to check out. But it has other merits on its focus than the previous "What We Did on Our Holidays" and "Unhalfbriocking", having little less romantic melancholy and fragileness present on them in my observation.