British folk-rock act Fairport Convention looked to American influences in its early albums, reflecting harmony-rich West Coast rock and drawing comparisons with the likes of Jefferson Airplane.
On Unhalfbricking, the second of three albums released in 1969, something more ancient and honest makes its presence felt. Traditional English folk music, pungent with peat and sea-spray, lures the band back to its roots; overlaying even the three Bob Dylan covers in an eight-song set.
But the transition that would be more fully realised on next album Liege And Lief is far from complete. What we have, therefore, is music that sits in a wonderful state of flux, begging to be enjoyed by all-comers.
From the lively sing-along Si Tu Dois Partir (Dylan's If You Gotta Go, Go Now reworked) to the country-rock lilt of Roger McGuinn's The Ballad Of Easy Rider, the album celebrates the virtues of the song, rather than its treatment.
The one conspicuously traditional track is itself a gateway to more contemporary sounds. A Sailor's Life, brought to the band by vocalist Sandy Denny, owes as much to the extended jams of New York drone-merchants the Velvet Underground as it does the framework of English folk. But it is Denny's dusky, melancholic singing that evokes her British heritage, seemingly formed from the mist on the moors.
Denny provides the album's two other highlights: the jazzy, gently swaying heartbreaker Autopsy and now much-covered folk classic Who Knows Where The Time Goes? It is she who conjured up Unhalfbricking during a road-trip word game designed to confound, and it is her influence that will lead the band further into the realm of tradition.
