1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 174. Fairport Convention – Liege and Lief (1969)

 

Dave Swarbrick joins the band more fully for this album, providing violin and mandolins, as does Dave Mattacks on drums, and all vocals are now performed by the pure folk voice of Sandy Denny.

It’s a more folky and less rocky album overall compared to Unhalfbricking, with a lot of adaptations of traditional tunes, and consequently chock full of elfin knights, besmirched maidens, shapechangers, and going a-walking one May morning.

The ballad Matty Groves for example has a story that wouldn’t be out of place in an Americana folk song either – the lady of the house takes a fancy to Matty Groves, only for her husband to come back unexpectedly and kill Matty in a duel, then kills his wife when she proclaims she would rather kiss the dead Matty than her husband. You’ll love it; everybody dies. That the trappings are of a Lord in a Castle and the fight with swords, rather than six-guns, makes it more English (possibly Scottish actually since he is Lord Donald).

Farewell, Farewell, is a plaintive song that I could hear the Barnsley Nightingale, Kate Rusby, doing justice to, while The Deserter (wherein the luckless deserter is saved from the firing squad by getting conscripted again) is straight out of the Bellowhead catalogue in style. There’s a medley of tunes (reels, jigs, not sure of the difference) in The Lark In The Morning Medley, and there’s the ballad Tam Lin full of faerie folk. And on that note, Reynardine is all about a were-fox who abducts young maidens, sung in slow mode by Denny with the rest of the band providing haunting and sparse instrumentation.

This album didn’t hit me with the same force as Unhalfbricking, but writing it up now makes me realise that I did really like it; I suspect in some ways it might have more repeatability since there’s a bit more variety and subtlety in the tracks. It provides a nice pairing as a diptych with their two 1969 albums – one more contemporary, one more traditional, but both very clearly British folk.

And, wow. That’s the Sixties done with. It feels like we’ve travelled a long way since Elvis Is Back! with a lot of innovations and changes to music. And there’s still five and a half decades, and over 800 albums, yet to come. Let’s go!