FAIRPORT CONVENTION

Fairport Convention's Unhalfbricking is another great 1969 release from a band that had a bumper crop that year. There may be a somewhat larger emphasis on more modern cover versions than the more traditional Liege and Lief, but then again the extended guitar explorations that are unleashed when Richard Thompson and Simon Nichol let loose result in radical transformations of the songs anyway. Yes, they still owe a debt to Dylan, but there's not a trace of Dylan's distinctive sound here even when they do cover some of his material: the conventions of the Fairport sound are clearly set out at this stage of their career.

From the Northwest Passage to Cape Horn

This is the latest studio album at the time of writing by Fairport Convention. It continues in the venerable tradition that the band has been following since the 80's with albums such as Red And Gold, The Five Seasons, The Jewel In The Crown, Who Knows Where The Time Goes? and Over The Next Hill. This is not only the most stable period in the band's long history, but also in my opinion the strongest. Festival Bell is however not up to par with these preceding albums even if it does have a couple of strong tracks.

There are many songs in Fairport Convention's catalogue that pertain to the sea. Here there are two of those in Mercy Bay and The Wild Cape Horn, both songs telling stories of dangerous and arduous sea journeys. The former tells the story of a crew trying to find the Northwest Passage. This very good song is one of the few highlights of this album and it would have fitted very nicely on some of the aforementioned albums. Excellent storytelling through music, evoking images of an icy, foreboding world depressingly far away from England's green. The Wild Cape Horn is also one of the better songs here and this one tells the story of a sailor rounding the notorious Cape Horn.

There are two instrumentals having the name of Danny Jack in the title. The up-tempo Danny Jack's Chase is another highlight. Its companion Danny Jack's Reward is somewhat less memorable, but perhaps the most "progressive" piece of this album together with the brief Albert & Ted, these allowing for a bit more instrumental workouts including a bass solo. The rest of the album is filled with rather standard Fairport Convention numbers, some of which are good and others (including the title track) are rather bland. It sometimes feels as if they are just going through the motions, cruising on autopilot, making decent but predictable music. The second half of the album is relatively weak, and the first real embarrassment is Ukelele Central, an awful ditty performed on that despicable instrument. There is also a re-make of Rising For The Moon, originally sung by Sandy Denny on the album of that name. This version is neither here nor there. I think that this album could easily have been made shorter by dropping a few of the weakest tracks.

Despite some good moments, Festival Bell is an average album and not the best place to begin with latter day Fairport Convention. Start instead with some of the albums I mentioned above, particularly the excellent (and weakly conceptual) Jewel In The Crown.

Fairport Convention has sung for fourty-six years now and they still have a nice flow in their music. The band is made up by Simon Nicol, Chris Leslie, Ric Sanders, Gerry Conway and Dave Pegg. Even if this is good music, there isn't what they were in the late sixties and early seventies. I heard them here in Stockholm two weeks ago and was amazed. They are still a very good band and of course they played a lot of old gems such as Doctor of Physick and Sir Patrick Spens. But now I am reviewing their last studio recording Festival Bell from 2011, two years ago now.

This record shows us some things were better before the cd came and made the records longer. With less songs and more concentration on those left it could have been great. This record starts good with a traditional sailor ballad " Mercy Bay" with a long and telling story and a little sad melody with a typical british voice in Simon Nicol. This is the albums best song along with two instrumentals "Danny Jack's Chase" and "Danny Jack's Reward". These two are also the only progressive here with exciting themes going around and broken by experimental interrupts. There is dreaming there I presume. The last one has a bass sole with excellent Dave Pegg. "Albert and Ted" is also an exciting little song. Ralph McTell is composer of two tracks "Around the wild cape horn" and "London Apprentice/Johnny Ginears" and they are strong singer/songwriter material with tempo and feeling. Otherwise I feel these (other) songs quite weak if you think of how it could have been. This is not a pioneering record but it's nice they are live and still play folk rock ? a great genre.

On Liege & Lief Fairport Convention made their definitive break away from previous 60s folk rock precedents, which had concentrated mostly on presenting modern material from singer- songwriters like Dylan, and instead applied a folk rock approach to adapting more traditional folk fare, focusing in particular on arrangements of British folk standards with only a smattering of original compositions.

It's spoken of as a groundbreaking album, and it is, but to perceive this you need to remember that the real inventiveness here is in the arrangements rather than in the compositions themselves, with mellow electric guitar solos and the like being worked into the mix so naturally you'd have imagined these songs were originally composed for electric instruments. Fairport Convention weren't the first people to take this sort of approach to British folk rock, but few were as successful as they are here.

A first review of one of my favorite bands from the 60's and 70's. So let's begin with my least favorite record of them. The last on the island record label. After the polished but good 'Rising for the moon' record, the band fell apart. What was left of them, made this record together with a bunch of guest musicians. Under the name Fairport. I can accept that this isn't really prog anymore. But even without that there are not much good songs on this record. the two traditionals are reasonable. 'When first into this country' has a nice melody, and the same can be said of the instrumental 'The frog up the pump'. Although they have done a lot better instrumentals. Well, and the rest is very very poor. A funk/folk feel in 'Cropredy capers'. A try at Sandy's song '(Take away the load)'. Not much succesful. And the rest are songs which you almost have forgotten after you have heard them. I am aware that this is a transitional record. And the follow up 'Bonny bunch of roses' is much better of quality. I doubt between one or two stars. But with only two songs who are only just a very little better then the rest, i cannot give this record a higher rating than only one star

10/15P.: The ultimate Bob Dylan recycling album depicting Fairport Convention on an interim course of covering predominantly American music with a British kind of eccentricity. In spite of some inessential moments this album still keeps a sufficient level of meaning, but the folk rock longtrack surely can't hold a candle to the group's later efforts in that genre.

Unhalfbricking is sad, it's funny, it's colorful, it's British and American at the same time, it's partly innovative, it's authentic and it's a tough listen. It is, perhaps, anything you may associate with how a folk rock band might be, but what it doubtlessly isn't is a consistently satisfactory album. Actually, it was pretty obvious that - after the warmly glowing What We Did on Our Holidays - something was going to change. Lead singer Iain Matthews left the band, and this shifted the lead vocal duties to Sandy Denny who, in her prime, sang folk songs with The Strawbs in the minor venues of Great Britain.

Maybe it's partly because of a helplessness which course to take with the band, but maybe also because Bob Dylan had shocked the world of pop music with another, - actually the third - 'new sound' he had worked on (i.e., the Americana genre): this album is schizophrenic in the combination of its eight songs which are radically different from each other, but it makes the very best out of the fairly adverse conditions.

On the definite plus side there is the excellent track Genesis Hall and the good, but slightly inefficient version of Sandy Denny's stellar Who Knows Where The Time Goes. The latter is widely (and, in my opinion, also correctly) viewed as her signature song, but there's a demo version she recorded in 1967 in which she accompanied herself on the acoustic guitar, and I like that version better than the full band version which feels to quick and straight to let her voice really flourish. A timid guitar solo and Simon Nicol's soulful rhythm guitar, however, are really good, and these minor points of criticism cannot change the fact that it's the song of Unhalfbricking which I listen to most frequently.

There's really nothing you can criticise about Genesis Hall - the dulcimer scratches, Ashley Hutchings' bass guitar walks along in its own special way, Richard Thompson provides his first upfront backing vocals to accompany Sandy Denny's haunting singing and the whole band does every possible thing to convey the chilly and husky atmosphere which so many of Richard Thompson's later songs should offer. What a perfect way to begin an album! But then comes the pretty whimsical Si Tu Dois Partir, which is delightful as the song of the group which is most originally linked to Cajun music, but it does smell a lot of smoke-filled evenings and a certain musical aimlessness. The song itself is a French translation - aided by a French-speaking audience member - of Bob Dylan's early song If You Gotta Go, Go Now, filled with reedy accordions, loose backing vocals and the hectic rattling and scratching of some percussion instruments. However, the song is notable for being - going along the track listing order of the songs - the first song of the band in which Dave Swarbrick can be heard playing the fiddle.

Autopsy is a faintly jazz-influenced and relaxed pop song written by Sandy Denny, consisting of two parts, the first and more folk-inflected one being in 5/4 time and the second one going into a pretty sharp 4/4 measure with enough space for a lovely little guitar solo by Richard Thompson. Listenably, the two parts were composed at a different time and stuck together later, but this doesn't hurt at all - especially regarding the beautiful vocals and the quiet but effective dulcimer melody in the background.

Cajun Woman picks up Richard Thompson's cajun influences again, but implants them into a spicy rock'n'roll with an unleashed Thompson on electric slide guitar, duelling a wee bit with Dave Swarbrick on violin. Drummer Martin Lamble is in fine form in this track as well, propelling the song further on with some accurate kick drum eights.

A Sailor's Life surely wasn't the first time that traditional folk and rock music were fused (according to my research this award goes to The Byrds' He Was A Friend of Mine and The Beach Boys' Sloop John B), but it was the first time that an extended jam of thorny and rootsy psychedelic rock was built around an old folk melody. At 12 minutes length with one mere chord stretching through the whole track, the whole effect it makes is rather 'static'. Violinist Dave Swarbrick and guitarist Richard Thompson throw tiny licks and scalic fragments at each other rather than working around melodies, which makes this track a nearly jazzy affair. A comparison of the rhythmically vague vocal melody and the (similarly vague) melody of Reynardine, a track on the band's next record, however, shows why the latter sounds better to my ears: in Reynardine the melody isn't cast into a steady rhythmic frame and it is gilded a lot more with atmospheric sounds. I marvel a lot at Thompson's and Swarbrick's eccentric interplay and also at the doubtless historical importance of this recording, but listening through the whole track is a pretty tiring thing.

Interestingly, there is even more Dylan material on this CD, apart from Si Tu Dois Partir. At first, there is a rendition of Dylan's lengthy 1963 outtake Percy's Song and the Basement Tapes relic Million Dollar Bash. Not used for the original album, but tried in the studio were the already widely known Dear Landlord from Dylan's 1967 album John Wesley Harding and, shortly after the album sessions, Ballad of Easy Rider, the collaboration of Dylan and Roger McGuinn (of The Byrds) for the film of the same title. But the question which puzzles me is why the band chose these particular Dylan tracks. The British Dylan management outpost allowed the band to listen through nearly the whole Basement Tapes which Dylan recorded with The Band in late 1967. But instead of covering Too Much Of Nothing or another one of the meatier Basement tracks they rather stuck to older Dylan songs - the only Basement choice being the pretty empty Million Dollar Bash, a country throwaway without a discernible melody, apart from the catchy chorus. Nonetheless, the other Dylan songs are good - if strange - choices. Percy's Song itself is a perfect song, perfectly arranged by the band and succeeding extremely well in wrapping the listener in the ever-returning 'turn, turn, turn again/turn, turn, to the rain and the wind' chorus. But, compared with the wonderful BBC version, the harmony vocals - especially of Iain Matthews who left the band during the sessions - get lost in the mix, just like the dulcimer which doesn't feel completely in line with the full-on rock band line-up. A very good song it is nevertheless.

The two bonus tracks are welcome additions to the original album. Dear Landlord, always reminding me of Dylan's earlier composition Ballad of a Thin Man, is an incredibly haunting and dark piece of country-inflicted American music, and this rendition showcases Sandy Denny's ability of augmenting songs with a low and brooding piano backing - she would later add to Richard Thompson's debut solo album in the same way. The sophisticated melody is completely in Denny's vocal range and bassist Ashley Hutchings, - as usual - never playing a note if it's not doubtlessly essential for the song, is actually more in the foreground than the two guitars.

Ballad of Easy Rider actually doesn't belong to this CD since it was one of the earliest recordings for the Liege and Lief sessions, already tracked with Dave Mattacks on the drums. I wholeheartedly agree that the song would be tout a fait deplaced in the context of Liege and Lief, so I am quite content with it being added to this release. Originally, it was written in a fast 2/4 country signature, but Fairport Convention transformed it into a weary and forworn 3/4 measure, stretching the whole running time to twice the length, including a really moody guitar solo by Richard Thompson. The summer of 1969 was the time when the whole band hit rock bottom after an accident in which Richard Thompson's girlfriend and drummer Martin Lamble were killed. I'm sure that the depressive state which the band was in is the reason why this song is possibly the saddest and most disheartened recording I know from this band. Dave Mattacks, later a most wanted studio drummer with an unbelievable punch and sense for spectacular fills, plays quite unobstrusively, too. The diffidence with which the band covers this pastoral anthem of freedom makes this song an essential listen for every friend of folk rock.

Taken together, Unhalfbricking is by no means an dissatisfying album, but it's also not among the best ones which this prolific band achieved to record. People who think they might enjoy a fairly eccentric and often whimsical take on folk rock with a fair amount of great and more reflective songs will surely like this album. In its totality it's not an essential listen, but there are enough numbers on this album which totally prove why this band is considered one of the greatest on the borderline between folk and rock music.

12.5/15P. A consistent collection of beautifully-crafted and rootsy original compositions plus a broadband choice of covers makes up a perfect soundtrack for a cozy winter evening. Each song is different, but all of them go together perfectly well. And - best of all - no psychedelic experiments to spoil the enjoyment!

This album is so much of a piece that I would do it harm if I deconstructed it the same way I'm inclined to do it otherwise. In 1968, a time in which the clash of Indian folk, west coast psychedelia, folk and rock music resulted in a lot of messy albums, it is rare that you find an album which shows a self-confident and mature band with classy compositions instead of sitar solos and strange Vaudeville songs. This album, picking up songs and influences from both sides of the Atlantic ocean, has a remarkable dignity to it - a clerical atmosphere in the reverberated harmony vocals of Sandy Denny and Iain Matthews (as in Book Song), a grievous power of the swampy Delta sound in You're Gonna Need My Help and The Lord is in this Place (recorded by Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson in a church in a vocals-plus-slide-guitar lineup) and the melodicism of Scottish pipers and balladeers in the two British folk adaptations and, actually, in most of Richard Thompson's lead guitar parts.

And it was also Richard Thompson, 18 years old at that time, who provided the slightly psychedelic pop song Tale in Hard Time which includes wonderfully entangled guitar drones in the beginning and the end in addition to the heavenly vocals, a lovely harpsichord in the background and the slightly twisted rhythm. It's actually my favorite tune on the record, if I think it over for a little while. Book Song, on the surface, looks like one casual American country ballad, but due to its ethereal atmosphere and the chilly reversed-played guitar tracks it is on one level with Gram Parsons' best ballads on the Burrito Brothers' debut album. Curiously there are some seconds of sitars and Hammond organ in front of and after the song, but these seconds turn out to be quite tuneful. No Man's Land dips into Cajun music, a genre which you do not regularly listen to when you are a rock listener. Cajun music is the product of an accomodation of the upbeat and often accordion-dominated folk music of French migrants to the new homeland which they strove to inhabit, an area we now call Louisiana. It was also Richard Thompson who brought in these influences, building them into an unusual pop song with some Byrds influences.

Actually I'd also suggest that this album is a lot more appealing than the critically acclaimed Unhalfbricking. Compared with the overlong and rhythmically unstable A Sailor's Life, the two folk songs on What We Did On Our Holidays are concise and haunting, Nottamun Town with drummer Martin Lamble's fiddle accents, four-part harmonies and Thompson's rapid acoustic guitar shredding in a more medieval way, She Moved Through the Fair rather echoing Bert Jansch and Shirley Collins with the hushed and jazz-influenced Gibson lead guitar and Sandy Denny's stellar and utterly British vocal delivery. The Unhalfbricking track Who Knows Where The Time Goes?, in a way, also pales a wee bit compared with the Dylan cover I'll Keep It With Mine which is, in Fairport's heavily assimilated and piano-backed version, doubtlessly the precursor to the later band interpretation of that Sandy Denny track. I'll Keep it With Mine is 6 beautiful minutes of folk rock with also explain a bit which role the inconspicuous rhythm guitarist Simon Nicol played in this stage of the group's biography. Without any doubt Who Knows Where The Time Goes features a sufficient amount of own ideas and beautiful hooks, as proved by her gorgeous solo demo recorded in 1967, but the Fairport version from 1969 just gives Sandy too little space to shine. Sandy Denny's composition Fotheringay, perhaps as unusual an album opener as The Band's Tears of Rage which was published around the same time, gives the band the opportunity to work on the more classical aspects of folk music. The song deals with Queen Mary I of Scotland, a person quite important in the 16th century politics of England and Scotland, a time in which - to say the least - the situation between the British and the Scottish was more tense than one could imagine it today. In the folk rock genre these realms, be it genuine minnesongs or just songs with a more scholastic approach towards history, are less frequently ventured into than the dances and ballads of the working class - and don't get me wrong, it's actually the working class material which I, thanks to folklore collectors Roud and MacColl etc., have the closest relation to.

Bandleader Ashley Hutching's Mr.Lacey, though saved from banality by Nicol's and Thompson's properly concerted double guitar work and the bizarre lyrics mentioning British inventor Bruce Lacey, is slightly out of place on this album. I surely wouldn't miss it if the band kept it in the vaults; after all, Ashley Hutchings always did best when he arranged the music, not when he composed it. * Simon Nicol's brief acoustic guitar instrumental End of A Holiday, however, is a superb closer to this album. Quiet and delivered with understatement, it's a nice coda to the enthusiastic anthem Meet on the Ledge, which is really good, but at the moment in my opinion not - as most people profess - one of the very best songs in the Fairport Convention repertoire. Nonetheless it received some further bitterness - along with the 1967 track M1 Breakdown - when drummer Martin Lamble and Richard Thompson's girlfriend died in an accident on the M1 motorway in early 1969. Jack Bruce dedicated his first solo album to Thompson's girlfriend, and Ashley Hutchings - injured heavily as well - left the band to start a huge number of utterly successful folk rock projects afterwards.

The bonus tracks, apart from the commercial and, after all, quite superficial Bryant song Some Sweet Day, show Fairport Convention as an unexpectedly proficient blues rock band, Throwaway Street Puzzle in a more West Coast fashion than the gruff You're Gonna Need My Help. The former - never at all a throwaway track even though it's a b-side - convinces with fine distorted blues harp playing and a tricky guitar lick which is better than the actual guitar solo, the latter features hypnotic percussion work and electric slide guitar, never keeping the matter too far away from the sound of Led Zeppelin on III and IV.

I won't give this album a full five star rating because of the minor faults already mentioned and, actually, because this rating wouldn't feel correct. For sure, this shouldn't keep you from buying this excellent record which is at least as important as the group's seminal Liege and Lief album, and nearly as moving and haunting as the less seminal, but more tightly crafted recordings in the Mattacks-Nicol-Swarbrick-Thompson-Pegg lineup (1970). Most importantly, this album doesn't get its noteworthiness merely from its historical relevance, but also by its rustic beauty which exposes itself in many different directions.

* [In this respect I cannot recommend enough what great achievements Mr. Hutchings made with his Albion Country Band and related projects. Every rock music listener looking for music of the most independent kind may expect a completely new listening experience: the work of a man who got so much absorbed in the British music that he was able to unite dozens of different musicians over the years - from first-row folk revivalists in the vein of Martin Carthy (who inspired Bob Dylan quite a lot) onto Canterbury musicians Lol Coxhill and Ric Sanders - to revive the strangest British traditions such as the Morris dancing. Start with the Morris On album from 1972, if you wish to explore this kind of music.]

Quite honestly, these are folk tunes plugged in. But in these electrically adapted folk tunes are some lively performances from the instrumentalists who seem to be having fun with the material.

As for the tunes themselves, the dynamic range varies from full throttle, foot-stomping rock to near quietude. It is quite interesting how the album opens with the lively ''Come All Ye'' followed directly by ''Reynardine'' with more sparse instrumentation; the two songs sound like they are meant to be connected.

The two tracks near the epic length are lengthy by lyrical content which is usually a huge turnoff for me, but the crescendo of sorts in ''Matty Groves'' and the groove of ''Tam Lin'' (watch the time sig counter) have a solid enough backbone to support their lengths.

Consistent quality can be an issue. Right after the highlight of ''Tam Lim'', ''Crazy Man Michael'' ends the album on way too soft of a note (I would have preferred ''Farewell, Farewell'' as a closer, but that point is moot), almost dull even. Sandy Denny does have a fantastic voice, but there are times I feel she simply isn't into it.

A lot of reviewers don't care for the medley smack in the middle of the album. I actually enjoy the thing even if its purpose is to showcase Dave Swarbrick's skills. Still, that track ended up being the difference maker for me.

If you enjoy folk music updated to modern (for the 60's) standards, this is a classic. Slightly missing it on the prog side of things, though.

Fairport Convention's debut is a pretty decent one. I agree it is not essential from the band. Sure they were strongly influenced by early Jefferson Airplane and other American folk and this album is made up of half group compositions, half covers. But throughout the songs are played well. It doesn't sound as well produced as the band's later albums, although as other reviews said, you can hear a lot of tasteful qualities and classy musicianship. Judy Dyble's presence is the most noticeable on the Joni Mitchell songs "I Don't Know Where I Stand" and "Chelsea Morning". Her voice may not be as strong as Sandy Denny's who would replace her by the next album, however Dyble still sounds very good, tuneful and pleasant. The two Richard Thompson ballads here are actually very good as well. "Sun Shade" and the melancholic "Decameron" are some examples of the band bringing their own personal touches into the mix, such as some very fine jazzy guitar work. 'The Lobster' is another band composition and a psychedelic mini-epic, standing out as the most progressive piece, as well as hinting the mature guitar style Thompson would display after the album "Full House". Some other covers on the album that are brilliant include "Jack 'O Diamonds" and another with Dyble on vocals named "One Sure Thing". So the verdict for this vintage folk-rock album? It is very good and shouldn't be judged too harshly because in retrospect many know that the more superior 'What We Did On Our Holidays' followed less than a year later. It still has a lot to offer and is just different from the later stuff. 3 solid stars.

14.5/15P.: This album doesn't leave any space to criticism, simply because the band knows exactly how to treat British folk music and how to compose original songs which fit perfectly well into the frame. Full House is haunting, rustic and dark, but it soothes you with wistful melodies and great arrangements.

First and foremost I'd like to praise Dave Mattacks. Between 1969 and 1972 he was, in my opinion, the best drummer in rock music. You can listen to every Fairport album, and to every session he played - it's always mesmerizing to hear these little fills, the breezy cymbals, the little counter-rhythms and the gentle punch of his drums. Sadly, his session playing became a lot more simple in the mid-1970s - this might be the reason why some people criticise his playing - but what you get on this album is rhythmic perfection. I never managed to listen to a whole album before while only concentrating on the drums - in this case it works!

So, which types of music do you find here?

*Eleven thrilling minutes of jigs & reels*

Many folk rock bands believe they have captured the real essence of folk music when they simply electrify some British traditional dance tunes which, in many cases, sound quite alike when you compare them. Fairport Convention do everything to actually insert the rock instruments in a way that they don't sound like simple sound effects, but rather like a careful reformation of the old style.

And I don't mean that Fairport Convention were always successful in doing that. Just listen to the Sir McKenzie's Daughter's Lament (...) tune with the horribly long title, which I also criticized in the review of the otherwise stunning 1970 live album of the band. It's got this boring 4/4 driving rhythm which ignores the natural rhythm of the dance tune. Of course, Dave Mattacks plays one of the better boring rhythms, at least many other drummers did a worse job, but this piece just isn't convincing. But it's been a b-side of a single, and as such it doesn't hurt anyone.

The dance stuff on the original album is in fact quite a lot better, and that's how it should be. Dirty Linen lacks a constant drum rhythm and hence allows Dave Pegg to play the melody of this rapid jig on the bass guitar along with the violin and the guitars. Everyone in the band actually plays the same thing simultaneously, but I've rarely heard such a tribal and 'Nordic' power to a jig. Dave Mattacks also appears in this track, but plays some bodhran in the beginning and the drum kit inbetween, but only for a few measures each. Every stroke he sets in this album has its purpose, no drum stroke is superfluous, and that's one of the reasons why this album is the band's ultimate masterpiece. Flatback Caper is really really long, longer than most of the dance medleys, but it's so damn entertaining thanks to the tricky rhythm changes and Dave Pegg's and Dave Swarbrick's duelling mandolins; it's real tight and it simply rolls on and on without even coming close to boredom or narcissistic noodling.

*Twenty-two minutes of Thompson/Swarbrick originals: sometimes lamenting, sometimes easy-going, but most of the time plainly shocking.*

The album opener Walk Awhile could be called country rock if it was played by any other band. But the whole attitude of the band, and attitude means lyrics, singing style and all those things which you instantly hear without knowing the band's history, is far away from all that US truck driving stuff. Firstly, there are Thompson's typically cryptic lyrics. They're no classic poems, they rather depict conversations or are narratives in metric form, and they are always shaped by the stream-of-consciousness-like invented surnames and places and the strange metaphors. They're rustic and dark, but hallucinating at the same time. Secondly Simon Nicol, Dave Swarbrick, Dave Pegg and Richard Thompson (listed up chronologically) may sing one stanza each and move into harmony vocals in the stanzas. And these harmony vocals are as mesmerizing as the legendary Watersons and Young Tradition material, but in a very unique way. And the muffly sound of Liege and Lief has disappeared, too. The violin finally sounds like a real violin, and the drums are crystal clear as well. I absolutely love these busy little drum fills before each stanza, as to be heard around 1:20. The piece is already a worthwhile listen because of this bonnie little part.

Sloth has often been described as a British response to the Allman Brothers and Grateful Dead, a jam tour de force around the weary lament of a soldier in the state of war. Usually I'm quite cautious about jam pieces because they frequently are a shell without content, but this one avails itself really much of the sophisticated dynamic mounting (and, of course, dismounting) of the solos. The two lead instruments are, needless to say, Swarbrick's violin and Thompson's electric guitar. And where A Sailor's Life was still quite formless in its lengthy instrumental part, the two soloists now know how to interact, throw short melodies at each other and braid the violin and guitar improvisations to a forceful unit. And the vocal part isn't only the vehicle for the jam, but a fully working song which appears in the beginning, in the middle and in the end of the whole track - augmented by beautiful harmony vocals around the alternating lead vocals of Thompson and Swarbrick. In concert, the dynamic contrast would become even greater because in the second third of the song the band would calm down from a blastbeat section in the vein of Led Zeppelin (yes, Dave Mattacks was able to play like a madman when he was jamming with the right people) to a silent pizzicato part in which the rhythm was barely recognizable. The studio version is comparatively tame, but has an uncongested and lively sound which is simply plain listening pleasure.

The big surprise is Poor Will & The Jolly Hangman. For some really inscrutable reason Thompson deleted this piece from the album at the very last possible moment in 1970. I don't know why he did that, perhaps because it was his first lead vocal ever, but thankfully it appears at its original place on this reissue. The intro and outro parts with the distant multi-tracked Stratocaster finger-picking are already most captivating, but the guitar solo from 3:30 to 4:30 is a masterpiece beyond comparison, and it assures me that the band never played finer than in 1970. Quite a lot of distortion for Thompson's means, given that he usually prefers just a wee bit of crunch on his guitar sound, and again he does his typically weird string bending stuff. Furthermore you'll find his strangely 'chordal' approach to soloing and the menacing drones which are hammered through on the lower strings, but the threatening thrash of Mattacks' drums and Swarbrick's fairly tender mandolin work even seem to inspire Thompson to unforeseen heights. His voice is a strangely fragile one, but at the same time with an authenticity which also shines without Swarbrick as the second lead vocalist - even though Swarbrick, a grandee and innovator of British folk in the early 1960s, has been an invaluable enrichment to the sound of the band, of course. I can still remember the astonishment when I first heard Swarbrick's croony voice in that Sailor's Alphabet part of the Babbacombe Lee album; and Full House is clearly the better album of the two.

And don't forget the lyrics which hold a mirror up to a perverted society, presenting the poor people as an audience which thinks a death by hanging to be just a good show ('here's a toast to the jolly hangman, he'll hang you the best that he can'). The employment of archaic symbols, symbols of a time in which the social and political system was more openly arbitrary than it is today, to show how close the modern society tends to re-approach the conditions of the 17th century, would always be important to Thompson; listen to his solo track The Great Valerio to hear another psychological analysis of social voyeurism, using the symbol of a tightrope dancer on his wire.

The next psychoanalytic - and even psychosexual - song is Doctor of Physick, the cruellest and most shockingly candid piece on this album which deals with a man who comes in the night to rape girls. Verses as explicit as 'And I fear I could not find my maidenhead' and the repeated chorus 'Doctor Monk unpacks his trunk tonight' are breathtakingly brutal, but in their overall impression not much more savage than many traditional folk songs. Just check the lyrics of the Scots song Twa Corbies, as recorded by Steeleye Span, which is about ravens discussing in which manner to lacerate a nobleman's corpse, and Hanged I Shall Be (played by the Albion Country Band in 1973) deals with a lover abusing and murdering his fiance a few days before the marriage. In all of the cases the lyrics aren't only provocatively shocking, but have both a literal level and an allegorical one: What do the religious connotations express in this song ('hold your relic near', 'Doctor Monk'), what's the girls' attitude to that doctor ('[daughter], don't dream of any gallant men tonight') and which role does the dream itself play ('I dreamed last night a man sat on me bed')? And who actually warns the girl that the doctor 'unpacks his trunk'? Regardless of these remarks you get, from the musical point of view, a pristine acoustic guitar by Simon Nicol and some biting power chords played by Thompson on his Stratocaster, while Dave Mattacks - a trained piano tuner - adds a sombre harmonium layer in the background. The real star in this song, however, is Dave Swarbrick, delivering an unbelievably melodic viola work and awesome lead vocals; Thompson, however, sings lead in the part in which the girl speaks.

Now Be Thankful, the a-side of the 1970 single which appears twice as a bonus track, is a less stressful Thompson composition sung by Swarbrick which rather sounds like a church ballad. I mean these songs in which one person's singing the more complex verses with the melismatic structures (q.v. 1:40) whilst the whole community sings along in the chorus. And this chorus is really uplifting with its rejoicing harmony vocals ('now be thankful to your maker'), the blurred symbolism ('crystal waters', 'the red rose', 'stones too cold to kneel' etc.) and the strange rhythmic offsets which occur when a song has been composed without a steady rhythm. A song like that could indeed sound soppy, but firstly you again don't know where Thompson is really at since the lyrics are too misty and sometimes too dark for a Christian gospel track, and secondly the far distant guitar notes are mesmerizing in a way akin to how Farewell Farewell on Liege and Lief was mesmerizing, too. And thirdly there are these little guitar interludes which always remind me of a Bach Menuett, and all that is condensed into hardly two-and-a-half minutes! After all it's simply a gorgeous song, but best listened to in the alternate remix. Yes, there's really a big difference between the two versions although they are both derived from the same recording. The second mix sounds unusually 'remixed', but by far breezier than the flatter mono recording which was used as the single.

*And finally ten short, but immaculate minutes of folk music*

Sir Patrick Spens was left over from the Liege and Lief sessions and has been performed with Sandy Denny for quite some time. It's impossible to say which version is better, but this version features some of the best chordal lead vocals ever. Many reviewers criticize that the vocals on Full House sound unconfident and weak, but I don't get that point at all. Swarbrick's lead vocals flourish on top of Pegg's and Nicol's steady fanfarish vocal drone, then Pegg and Nicol pause again for one verse to sing unisono with Swarbrick again - that's a footloosely composed vocal arrangement as it should be, nothing left to complain about.

And Flowers of the Forest was the best possible choice to end the album, a song which nowadays - albeit played by a group of pipers - serves as a lament for the soldiers killed in action during the 1513 Battle of Flodden in Northumberland, the northernmost county of England. Simon Nicol, at that time responsible for the whole acoustic guitar duties in the band, plays the electric dulcimer in this track and provides the gentle drone which this song deserves to have. The vocal arrangement lacks this afflicted mood of the ancient Scottish version with all the microtonality in the lead melody, as performed by Dick Gaughan amongst others, but gets a haunting four-part harmony arrangement in which all of the four characteristic voices can be differentiated clearly (Thompson's clearly in the foreground in the third verses each, by the way). In such a diminished arrangement every present instrument attracts attention. And this effect is used by Dave Mattacks to maximum effect: the verses per se could be stiffened to a plain 12/8 measure, which is that typical bluesy rhythm as in Pink Floyd's Shine On You Crazy Diamond. The last words of the verses, though, need some more space in the end to develop their full effect, and so the natural 15/8 measure of the song is accentuated by Mattacks by one short cymbal swirl on the 1st beat and one pedal hi-hat stroke each on the 4th, 10th and 14th beat of the measure - a really unusual accentuation, but in fact more usual in Military Tattoos. This information is, of course, totally useless for the listening experience, but it shows how a complex rhythm can be created with minimal means.

The bonus track Bonny Bunch of Roses is inferior to the album stuff, but it's worth a four star rating, too. It isn't really disappointing, but really long, it's monotonous and as challenging as any rendition of a folk song about historical occurances can be. Mattacks only plays the tom-toms here in a similar way to the studio version of Pink Floyd's Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, Thompson and Nicol both play quite freely on their electric guitars and Pegg sets the rhythm with the bass guitar, and so it goes on and on while Swarbrick recites the vocals about Napoleon really carefully and slowly. You need to listen to it three times to get the melody! It's quite similar to A Sailor's Life, with even less groove though, but it would have interrupted the natural flow of the original album if it had replaced any of the other songs. I like it quite much as one of the most free-form tunes by Fairport Convention, and I even like it a bit more than A Sailor's Life, but I cannot listen to it every day.

...overall:...

To sum up, this album is a doubtless candidate for a strong 5-star rating. You can check my other reviews to assure yourself that the realms beyond the 14 points (out of 15) have only been reached by two Pink Floyd records until now. For sure, this recording doesn't meet the expectancies of a progressive rock listener. It's neither a concept album nor linked to classical music, jazz, avantgarde or comparable music in any way. But it's intricate and sophisticated in its arrangements, it has that totally British and cohesive mood all the way through, it's played by exceptional musicians and it's stuffed with excellent compositions which allow the listener to spot more and more finesses at every listen. To me it has been the key to explore the British folk music which I never really understood sufficiently before I finally this album for five euros (yes, it's really that cheap!). The reissue features high-quality bonus tracks, a decent booklet with the original weird liner notes by Richard Thompson and some new liner notes by Simon Nicol and an exemplarily great sound. Even if you're not too much in the folk stuff - give that album a try, it's a masterpiece of folk rock music.