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Rating: As is easy to guess, Nine is the ninth album released by Fairport Convention in October 1973.
The album features nine tracks remastered on CD in 2005 with the addition of four other tracks, one studio recording and three live recordings from 1973 in London (The Howff). None of the original members were still present, but the group included long-standing members like Dave Pegg (bass), Dave Swarbrick (violin), and Dave Mattacks (drums), along with Trevor Lucas (acoustic guitar and vocals) and Jerry Donahue (electric guitar). The latter two joined the group starting from the previous album Rosie, and, despite not objectively possessing the creative and performing skills of a Richard Thompson, remain two excellent guitarists (especially Donahue). The album has been subject to rather mixed reviews. To prove this polarization of opinions, it is enough to mention the more recent reviews such as the 4 out of 5 stars given by Augusto Morini in Riccardo Bertoncelli's volume (Bertoncelli 2007: 381) and the 2 out of 5 by Bruce Erder on All Music Guide (AMG).
As always, the truth lies in between; it is indeed a good album that alternates songs derived from popular tradition, rearranged in a well-established style, with original ballads. The excellent instrumental abilities of the group are demonstrated by tracks with a very high technical level, rich in never-banal virtuosity, as in “Brilliancy Medley & Cherokee Shuffle,” “Tokyo,” and the only great classic of the album that has gone down in history, the captivating “Hexhamshire Lass,” sung by Swarbrick, still present in the group's live lineup. These tracks with a marked instrumental tendency still appear as the instrumental legacy of a seminal album like Full House, a true watershed between the Danny phase and the Fairport of today. Among the ballads, always pleasant, the epic “Polly on the Shore” deserves mention as the best of the bunch, characterized by the stentorian singing of Trevor Lucas and Swarbrick's violin, and “Bring’em Down,” enriched further by Lucas's baritone voice and featuring an interesting instrumental section where Swarbrick's excellent violin once again takes center stage. A step below are the conventional “Big William,” “Pleasure and Pain,” the delicate “To Althea from Prison,” and “Possibly Parsons Green.” The bonus tracks, “The Devil in the Kitchen,” burdened by orchestral arrangements, and the live tracks, with the exception of the evocative and acoustic “George Jackson” sung again by Lucas, are instead superfluous.
Fairport Convention had surely made better albums, but this remains an extremely enjoyable record, excellently played with generally good quality songs with some peaks worthy of their better days. The album served as a prelude to the ephemeral return of Sandy Denny to the group, which would generate the alternating Rising for the Moon.
Tracklist and Lyrics
02 Polly on the Shore (04:55)
Come all you wild young men and a warning take by me
Never lead your single life astray or into bad company
As I myself have done, being all in the month of May
When I, as pressed by a sea captain, a privateer to trade
To the East Indies we were bound to plunder the raging main
And it's many the brave and a galliant ship we sent to a watery grave
Ah, for Freeport we did steer, our provisions to renew
When we did spy a bold man-of-war sailing three feet to our two
Oh, she fired across our bows, "Heave to and don't refuse
Surrender now unto my command or else your lives you'll lose"
And our decks they were sputtered with blood and the cannons did loudly roar
And broadside and broadside a long time we lay till we could fight no more
And a thousand times I wished myself alone, all alone with my Polly on the shore
She's a tall and a slender girl with a dark and a-rolling eye
And here am I, a-bleeding on the deck and for a sweet saint must lie
Farewell, my family and my friends, likewise my barley too
I'd never have crossed the salt sea wide if I'd have been ruled by you
And a thousand times I saw myself again, all alone with my Polly on the shore
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