Fairport Convention 3: Unhalfbricking

Like a lot of bands, Fairport Convention truly hit their stride with their third album. On Unhalfbricking they moved much closer to electrified English folk, setting the standard for others to follow. By this time Ian Matthews had left the band, bringing the core members down to five, but the presence of Dave Swarbrick on fiddle and mandolin would lead to his joining full-time, and we’re getting ahead of ourselves again.

As befits an album with a mysterious, meaningless title, it’s opened by the keening electric dulcimers on “Genesis Hall”, a typically brooding Richard Thompson lyric. Bob Dylan would get a chunk of the publishing royalties from this album, as three of his more obscure songs are included, the first being “Si Tu Dois Partir”, a near-jug band rendition of “If You Gotta Go, Go Now” translated into French. The complicated meter of “Autopsy” only enhances the gothic tone of the lyrics, but it’s “A Sailor’s Life” that is the literal and figurative centerpiece. Over eleven minutes this traditional tune begins quietly and builds much like the rolling sea, Sandy Denny sounding every inch of a fair maiden, Thompson tearing off a terrific guitar line against Swarbrick’s violin once let loose. And then the sea is calm again.

The 12-bar “Cajun Woman” is something of a rockin’ palate cleanser, as the tender and wistful “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” is finally heard in Sandy’s own rendition. Another Dylan obscurity, “Percy’s Song”, gets something of a campfire treatment but for those electric dulcimers and organ, and everyone gets a turn at a verse of “Million Dollar Bash”, back when The Basement Tapes was still a bootleg. (A later British CD added two Dylan-related bonus tracks: an outtake of “Dear Landlord”, plus “Ballad Of Easy Rider”—to which Dylan supposedly contributed one line—that was an outtake from the next album, but included for thematic reasons.)

The album’s release was unfortunately clouded by the death of drummer Martin Lamble two months earlier in a van accident while the band was traveling back from a gig. What’s more, while the British cover depicted the band partially concealed behind a fence at Sandy Denny’s parents’ house (they’re the pair in front), for some reason the American label decided to use a clearer snapshot of the band, albeit in the corner of a sleeve dominated by dancing elephants. Nonetheless, the music within is quirky yet solid, garnering the rating below. There’s really not much more we can say about it.

Fairport Convention Unhalfbricking (1969)—4