Fairport Convention - A Sense Of Occasion

New album for the 40th anniversary

Fairport have the rare ability to maintain a link to their past while still looking forward. This brand new album has plenty to please the traditional, while keeping the focus on new songs. Chris Leslie provides two clear winners with opener Keep On Turning The Wheel and his lovely Spring Song, while Ric Saunders fiddles anew with The Bowman’s Return and Your Heart & Mine. They’ve by no means wasted their only good material at the start, however, twothirds in we get Hawkswood’s Army, which could have made a great opener in itself, and Steve Ashley’s Best Wishes warms our hearts at the end.

In between, Fairport confidently revisit Polly On The Shore and Tam Lin, and maintain their form on Andy Partridge’s Love On A Farmboy’s Wages. It all adds up to an album of variety and pleasurable twists that, like a good wine, will only improve over time. Fairport’s 40th really is an occasion to celebrate.

Matty Grooves | MGCD 044

Reviewed by Kingsley Abbott
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