I dug this album out a couple of months ago, partly because I was having a Joe Boyd binge after reading his great book
, and partly because it won the Radio 2 Folk Award for most influential folk album of all time. I hadn't played it in ages, probably because I got it on vinyl at exactly the point (around 1987 or '88) where I had enough CDs to listen almost exclusively to them.
One is how remarkably similar it sounds to the new folk-rock darlings The Eighteenth Day of May, even though they cite Californian country rock as a greater influence (I'm not doubting them; I'm just saying what I hear). Another is a point that you and everyone else may see as blindingly obvious, but I've long been a defender of Judy Dyble, Fairport's first singer, who I think generally gets a bad rap. I really like the first album, on which she sings. But listening to this one, I have to concede that Sandy Denny is in a different class.
![]() |
Comments