Fairport Convention - Full House (1970)

Fairport Convention are a successful English band who are credited with inventing ‘electric folk’, a subgenre of folk rock based heavily on traditional English folk songs.

At the height of Fairport Convention's success (mostly due to their highly influential Liege & Lief album), lead singer Sandy Denny left the band, along with founding member Ashley Hutchings. The band recruited Dave Pegg to replace Hutchings on bass, but decided to move on without a female singer, sharing the vocals between them. This gave them the new lineup of guitarists Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol (the only founding members left), fiddle player Dave Swarbrick, bassist Dave Pegg and drummer Dave Mattacks.
Full House was their first album with this lineup, and continued with the style of electrified English folk they had perfected on Liege & Lief. However without Denny's ethereal vocals its sound was considerably different. Thompson, Swarbrick and Nicol were never going to be able to replace her in the role of lead singer, but between them they were actually able to forge ahead with a new sound, which what it lost in terms of vocal prowess was made up for by the genuine 'Englishness' of their voices. Full House is the sound of an old England of bygone years reborn through an electric rock band.
The songs on the album are roughly half originals (from Thompson and Swarbrick) and half traditionals. The originals include the haunting epic "Sloth", which soon became a regular part of the group's live set. The traditionals include two instrumental tunes, one of which sees Swarbrick and Pegg putting down their usual instruments and dueting on mandolins. Liege & Lief had included a similar instrumental medley, and it was soon to become a regular feature of Fairport Convention albums.

Liege & Lief (1969) <|> Angel Delight (1971)
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