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Rating: The choice made by Fairport for this 1987 album is quite extravagant: the title and the on stage photos on the cover openly suggest it is a live album, but that is not the case: the six songs and the medley included were regularly recorded in the studio, after which applause and assorted audience noises were added... but not from one of their concerts! Instead, it seems, from a performance by a colleague and dear friend, the late John Martyn.
The fact is that the band was in a very happy phase of their career, with the musicians eager to record and capture on disc the camaraderie and enthusiasm of the moment. The previous year they had even released a completely instrumental album, and a few months after this release (1987) there would be yet another album with new songs.
The result is a sumptuous, warm, and deep sound, skillfully enriched with those long reverberations intended to recreate the feel of a concert hall. The voice of Simon Nicol, the quintet's lead singer, warm and lush on its own to the levels of a Fabrizio De André, stands out in some brilliantly beautiful ballads (particularly the priceless jewel "Close To The Wind," but also the classic "Meet On The Ledge" with its celestial chorus in the refrain).
Who are the Fairport Convention? Simply the most renowned and, for many, meritorious British folk rock group: to date, they have been going strong for 45 years, with a vast discography, featuring a history of splendid musicians who have taken their place among their ranks (starting with the unfortunate Sandy Denny, a singer who constantly gives chills down the spine) and, lastly, a list of masterpiece songs scattered here and there in their discography.
Besides Nicol, the lead vocalist and vigorous rhythm guitarist especially with the acoustic, the Fairport of this period also included the great Dave Mattacks, an unusual drummer if ever there was one as he also plays keyboards (excellently) and produces everything (cum laude). Not to mention his percussive style: he hits like a blacksmith! I admired his attack, worthy of a hard rock formation at one of their concerts in Bologna, many years ago, one of the best in my career as a band observer on stage. To frame him even better, he's the guy who contributed to albums and/or concerts of Nick Drake, Steeleye Span, Brian Eno, Jethro Tull, Jimmy Page, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Elton John, and countless others.
The album's tracklist is equally supported by the two formulas with which this formation had fun building its repertoire and entertaining and satisfying its audience, that is, on one side, the pressing and joyful folk rides with fluttering violins, plucking mandolins, ironic and joyful vocals, and on the other, the lyrical and ancestral ballads, the inspired and chilling ballads.
The first group includes the opener "Reynard the Fox," an unknown author's traditional already recorded on their second album, as well as the following mandolin-accented "The Widow of Westmoreland’s Daughter," also a traditional, previously seen on a 1978 record but this time extended by a sparkling jig, magnificently led by Rick Sanders' virtuosic electric violin. And yet again, the so-called "Big Three Medley" that combines the unreleased traditional "The Swirling Pit" with the historic "Matty Groves" (from one of the group's masterpieces, "Liege and Lief" from 1969) and concludes with an instrumental by the excellent Sanders, "The Rutland Reel."
The formidable ballads that, in my opinion, make listening to this work exciting, begin with the atmospheric "The Hiring Fair," written by drummer/pianist Mattacks for an album just a couple of years before this one, and soaked with the most inspired Canterburian jazz, thanks especially to Sanders' sublime violin solo, no wonder with a past in the seminal Soft Machine.
In the fifth position in the lineup comes the priceless "Close To The Wind" already mentioned, the result of folk songwriter Stuart Marson's pen. The melody is simple, typically folk with the four-verse A-A-B-A pattern and no chorus. But it's the arrangement and the ancestral sensitivity of the quintet interpreting it that elevate it to sublime levels: the pizzicato of the violin and acoustic, the chimes of Mattacks' electric piano, the alluring notes of Dave Pegg's fretless bass (his final recording with the group before moving to Jethro Tull), the tone as already mentioned, warm and evocative from Nicol... six mind-blowing minutes.
The other two ballads are old pieces composed by Fairport's first, historical guitarist Dave Thompson. They are titled "Crazy Man Michael" and "Matty Groves," about whose magnificence was previously mentioned: magnificent choirs in poignant remembrance of Sandy Denny, who in the original version (1969) filled the high notes like no other could. For those unfamiliar with English folk, poor Denny is the one who duets with Robert Plant in the stratospheric heavy folk "The Battle Of Evermore," one of the many masterpieces of Led Zeppelin IV.
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