Album Reviews

(Originally posted in 2006)

With the release of the second, third and fourth Fairport Convention albums on 180g vinyl, lovers of British folk and folk/rock who weren’t around when these records were issued on vinyl by A&M in America and Island in the UK, can hear the brilliance of both the group and John Wood’s sympathetic engineering as originally intended. CD simply can’t breath life into the late Sandy Denny’s voice. On vinyl she’ll take your breath away.

The band’s first album, on UK Polydor (583 035), was a tentative but promising and eclectic affair featuring a very different lineup along with songs by Emmitt Rhodes, Joni Mitchell, Dylan and others, with Richard Thompson getting co-writing credit on a few.

The lead female singer was Judy Dyble, while Ian MacDonald handled male leads. The core of Thompson, guitarist Simon Nicol, bassist Ashley “Tyger” Hutchings and percussionist  Martin Lamble were there, however.

When Dyble left the group, the group found Sandy Denny. Also joining on the second album, What We Did On Our Holidays issued on UK Island in 1969 was Ian Matthews. The album was released in America as Fairport Convention and featured more conventional cover art.

What We Did..., which blends folk and folk/rock, opens with the haunting “Fotheringay”— a Denny original that immediately established her as the female voice of British folk/rock. Denny’s voice combined a husky edge with an angelic soaring presence that’s yet to be equaled by any female folky. Denny would later go on to form a group of the same name. The song sets a dark, mysterious autumnal mood that somehow carries sight and scent along with sound.

“Mr. Lacey” is a whimsical, salacious electric blues backed by what sound like vacuum cleaners, while “The Lord is in This Place, How Dreadful is This Place” is (well) recorded live in a church is a short, atmospheric dirge that ends with the sound of a coin dropping on the floor.

Richard Thompson contributes “No Man’s Land”, a delicate, tuneful song of longing backed by accordion and the side ends with a cover of Dylan’s “I’ll Keep It With Mine,” which was originally recorded by Nico on Chelsea Girls.

Side one is merely excellent. Side two is transcendent, both musically and sonically once you get past a merely competent cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Eastern Rain.” Engineeer John Wood captures the acoustic guitars brilliantly and creates a wet yet cleanly rendered acoustic that never fails to excite the senses.

 A reworking of the traditional “Nottamun Town” that combines standard folk sensibilities with a pseudo-Indian style bridge is both powerful and delicate, while Richard Thompson’s “Tale in Hard Time” soars with stately grace, highlighted by a Thompson solo that exposes for the first time, the electric sound the would develop into his trademark.

The ghost tale “She Moves Through the Fair” features a brilliant Denny vocal turn backed by equally evocative electric and acoustic guitar work and dramatic percussive accents by Martin Lamble, who would die soon thereafter in a car accident along with Thompson’s then girlfriend.

Thompson’s “Meet on the Ledge” is a powerful, dramatic  ballad oddly reminiscent of something The Jefferson Airplane might have performed, with Matthews playing the Marty Balin part, while the album’s denouement, Simon Nicol’s “End of A Holiday” is a short solo acoustic guitar conclusion to a powerful, yet delicately drawn atmospheric album that never fails to please every spin—and I’ve been spinning my pink label Island pressing for almost forty years!

Speaking of which, I’d be fooling you if I told you the reissue sounds as good as the pink label Island original. It doesn’t, but it’s plenty good. It loses some of the reverberant atmosphere, either because of the aged tape or because this has been sourced digitally. I really don’t know. However, unlike the Capitol Pet Sounds, this doesn’t sound “digital.” It merely sounds less nuanced and delicate. It still sounds very fine and if you don’t have  a pink label Island or an original A&M (which doesn’t sound nearly as good as the Island), you will still be more than happy with the results. If you end up loving, which is very possible, even probable, you’ll want to seek out the pink label edition but be prepared to pay dearly.

The follow up album, Unhalfbricking, is a short sweet set featuring the same lineup as ...Holiday minus Ian Matthews. The highlight is unquestionably Denny’s exquisite “Who Knows Where the Time Goes”, though the opener, Thompson’s “Genesis Hall” sung by Denny is also noteworthy. There are three Dylan covers, perhaps because the band got a hold of Dylan’s “Basement Tapes” before they were commercially issued. This one is more for diehard fans, though the group’s Cajun version of  Dylan’s “If You Gotta” ("Si Tu Dols Partir”) is lovely and the covers of “Percy’s Song” and “Million Dollar Bash” are equally good.

The original cover art, reproduced here, shows one of the band member's aging parents. A&M's art director apparently deciding that such an image was a “turn-off” for the “youth” market, replaced it with a picture of circus elephants mounting. This must have pleased the band no end.

If you’re not interested in parting with $60 for the trio of albums, skip Unhalfbricking and go directly to 1969’s Leige & Leif, the group’s fourth album that skips the covers in favor of electric re-workings of traditional UK dance/folk songs aided by Dave Swarbrick’s spirited fiddling.

Richard Thompson contributes two moving, bittersweet tunes alluding to the tragic losses of the group’s drummer Martin Lamble, and Thompson’s girlfriend Jeannie Franklyn. The opener, “Come All Ye”, is one of the album’s highlights, and once you hear it, you’ll have trouble getting it out of your mind and you won’t want to.  

4 Men With Beards’ 180 gram reissues of all three are well done, featuring paper on cardboard jackets and the 180g pressings are very good, though who did the mastering and where they were pressed is not divulged.

I highly recommend What We Did on Our Holidays. If you like that one, and you surely will, get Liege & Lief and once you’ve gone that far you’ll probably want all three.

Great reissue choices well done by the 4 Men With Beards. And yes, the music and the masters hold up.