Search - Fairport Convention :: What We Did on Our Holidays

Sandy Denny makes her debut with Fairport Convention

Lawrance M. Bernabo | The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota | 02/04/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

""What We Did on Our Holidays" was Fairport Convention's second album, but the first with Sandy Denny's ethereal vocals, which meant this was not the same group that had released their first, self-titled album the year before. This was more than evident with the first track on this 1969 album, "Fotheringay," one of Denny's earliest compositions (and a title that give to the group and album she made after leaving Fairport Convention). A gentle folk ballad, full of Celtic imagery, with Denny's vocals dancing around Richard Thompson's acoustic guitar playing, I think it is the best track on the album. The next cut, "Mr. Lacey," comes across like it was from a totally different album. There are several other excellent tracks on this album, Thompson's Meet on the Ledge," the traditional song "She Moves Through the Fair," and covers of rather obscure songs by both Joni Mitchell ("Eastern Rain") and Bob Dylan ("I'll Keep It With Mine"). This particular CD adds three bonus tracks recorded around that same period, which come from a BBC broadcast, a B-side of a single, and a studio outtake.



That same year Fairport Convention also released "Unhalfbricking" and "Liege and Lief," and the three albums defined the group's version of folk-rock, where they offered imaginative revivals of traditional folks songs using both acoustic and electric instrumentation, as well as original compositions. I think "What We Did on Our Holidays" is the weakest of the three albums because even though its best pieces are as good as anything on the other two, there are a couple of tracks that are less than satisfactory. Still, together these three albums from the Sandy Denny period establish the place that Fairport Convention has in the history of British folk-rock."