 "Still wonderful listening after all these years!!!" | 2008-07-31 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2EKKH46SLZ49 |
Liege and Lief continues to be my all time favourite album of all time!! The album came out in my senior year and since then I've worn out albums, 8 tracks and cassettes!
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| "Gold standard folk rock" | 2008-05-09 |
| - Reviewed By etrexler3 |
Sandy Denny's voice would be worth the price alone, but the sensational work by the musicians with her,Richard Thompson,Dave Swarbrick,Simon Nicol,Ashley Hutchings,and Dave Mattacks just make this one of the all-time great entries in the late sixties folk rock lists. British Folk with a perfect insertion of SF acid that'll have you laying back weeping for those dear,dead days beyond recall.
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 "pleasing" | 2007-12-18 |
| - Reviewed By User: A29C0R47SDSZH3 |
| This album is a good addition to my collection. It is sweet and makes good music to cook to. i would buy it again. |
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| "Best Ethnic Album of its time, without a doubt" | 2007-08-28 |
| - Reviewed By User: A22F0FFH362FCJ |
| It's strange, because Fairport Convention was a group before, Sandy Denny, and after. However, there has NEVER, EVER, been a voice, at least in my lifetime, that has come CLOSE to Sandy Denny's! SHE, MADE Fairport Convention SOMETHING!!! This is without a doubt their best album, PERIOD, and is VERY addicting to listen to. Beware of this! The group are ALL amazing musicians beyond belief, but it is Sandy Denny's voice that MAKES this album what it is and became. She was SUCH a marvelous ethnic Irish singer with octaves that go all over the place, it was something to experience, and still is, thank God for Digital! We should ALL MISS this special sweet Princess of voice of ALL time, no matter the genre of music you like. She is SO sorely missed! She died 4/21/1978 (age 31), in a mishap that is a bit shady, falling down some stairs at her parents house??!! Whatever, I personally lost a person for whom I totally loved hearing that MOST beautiful voice. The voice of an angel!! I just, personally wish that there were more people that CARED for her in the ways that make people proud of whom they are!!! SHE was CERTAINLY something to be proud of both in beauty and talent!!! Many albums survive her and should be bought and listened to, to enjoy what this amazing woman brought to us all, well, whatever, you want to label her as, as a singer. She WAS and IS SANDY DENNY! Her OWN person, one in a million. To listen to her is like nothing else in life. This particular album, basically, says it all in her singing and the groups talent. It's a bummer that neither, made much of a mark of the major markets after they departed. This is something that is truely a mystery. What could have been. I am SO honored to have EVEN been in the same generation to experience this amazing woman. Damn, Sandy, I SO miss you! |
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| "(4.5 stars) Should be considered a rock classic" | 2007-08-21 |
| - Reviewed By radioactiveman12 |
| Most rock fans have heard of this group, but how many have actually heard them is another situation entirely. In other words, not enough people have heard of this group - everyone says, "Oh yeah, Sandy Denny sang on `Battle of Evermore', didn't she?" Or maybe, "Yeah, Richard Thompson, the Shoot Out the Lights guy". Or -if they're really smart - "Dave Pegg played bass with Jethro Tull for a while". When you're down to people who have actually heard any Fairport stuff, it's probably a short list. Which is too bad, because the dramatic murder ballad "Matty Groves" is better than "Free Bird", "Stairway to Heaven" or what have you: sung convincingly by Sandy Denny (who sounds kind of like a British Joni Mitchell, not like that's reason to complain), and featuring one of the coolest instrumental sections known to man: a Medieval fiddle solo followed by a hard rock one. Awesome! You can keep "Hotel California" (actually, I'd prefer that song to be dragged to pillory) - that is a rock song, man. Okay, a folk-rock song, but who's counting? That's my favorite, but that's not to say everything else is total crap: the joyful "Come All Ye", majestic, long "Tam Lin", which pairs dramatic hard-rock riffs with fiddle once again; the breakneck instrumental jig "Lark in the Morning/Rakish Paddy Fox-Hunter's Jig/Toss the Feathers", and the wonderful love song "Reynardie". The only song that doesn't strike me as genius is "The Deserter" and even that isn't too bad. So I've got to give this my full backing - if you're in the mood for something off the beaten track, or seeking an older band that hasn't been played to death on the radio, go here |
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| "A folk rock classic." | 2007-07-14 |
| - Reviewed By mr105601 |
| If nothing else, Liege and Lief is probably the definitive English folk-rock album. By combining traditional music with more modern sounds, the album takes on a timeless, intoxicating quality that draws immediate comparisons to groups such as The Band. The songs are warm, earthy, and inviting The rousing "Come All Ye" leads listeners into the album with irresistable flair- Richard Thompson's electric guitar and Dave Swarbrick's fiddle do a dazzling dance around one another, melding the traditional and the contemporary with effortless proficiency. But the real star of this song (and most of the album, really) is vocalist Sandy Denny, whose voice is simply one of the most evocative, sonorous, and outwright beautiful sounds ever concieved. She lends a kind of enchanting majesty to "Come All Ye," creating sounds that arc gracefully over the music, hypnotizing the listener within seconds. Once that stunning introduction is complete, the band launches into a few electrified renditions of traditional English folk songs: "Reynardine" is a strange, haunting, and tension-filled performance, in which the instrumentation is used to create dramatic bursts of pure sound rather than an actual melody, while Denny's voice flits and flutters to fill the gaps between notes. The result is an ominous, mysterious classic. The group also does an excellent instrumental medley, a joyful mixture of sounds that threatens to make you dance like a crazy person. "The Deserter" and "Tam Lin" are equally evocative, and just as expertly performed. The highlight of the album, however, is the group's epic reworking of the traditional "Matty Groves." It's an incredible performance, one that sees the group at its very best: Swarbrick and Thompson duel eachother with mounting intensity accross the song's eight minutes, while drummer Dave Mattacks lends the song a strutting, storming rhythm. Denny is simply amazing, narrating the story of the song's ill-fated title character with equal parts sympathy and sarcasm, letting her voice dart in, above, and under the melody, bending notes and stretching sounds, twisting and shaping every word with a kind of prodigious abandon. It's a resonant and irresistable sound, and it makes the song an absolute masterpiece. The Richard Thompson-penned "Farewell, Farewell" is the icing on the cake, a beautiful and mournful ballad with dreamy instrumentation, a gorgeous collection of sounds melting and blending into one another. Liege & Lief is an inescapably excellent album, a masterpiece that should belong to every fan of folk or rock. |
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| "Classic Folk-Rock!" | 2007-06-03 |
| - Reviewed By mvindberg2 |
"Liege and Lief" was Fairport's first album that was almost entirely inspired by traditional British music. The band had previously released 3 albums during a relatively short period of time, and the repertoire had been a mixture of pop, rock and American and British folk.
In May 1969 after the recording of the previous album "Unhafbricking" the band had a terrible road accident which took the lives of drummer Martin Lamble and Richard Thompson's girlfriend Jeannie.
Other band-members were injured in the crash and the group were close to splitting up, but with their wounds healing up they eventually decided to continue with new members Dave Swarbrick and Dave Mattacks.
They did not want to perform their old material and needed a new direction and with inspiration from Ashley Hutchings and Sandy Denny they began digging into traditional Bristish folk music.
In a Hampshire farmhouse they began rehearsing material for a new album which eventually became "Liege and Lief".
The album inspired many other musicians to dig into traditional music and has now become a folk-rock classic and the album.
The original 8 tracks are all great and this new release features two bonus tracks recorded during the same sessions. "Sir Patrick Spence" was later recorded by the next Fairport line-up, here you have the opportunity to hear an early version with lead vocals by Sandy Denny singing slightly different lyrics. The arrangement may be less tight than the "Full House" version, but still a great addition to a timeless album. The other "new" track is a droning version of "Quiet Joys of Brotherhood" which Sandy later recorded several times and released on her second solo-album.
Though most of the material is traditional, there are a couple of originals written by Richard Thompson; and they both stand out. "Crazy Man Michael" ( co-written by Swarbrick ) and "Farewell Farewell" were always favourites - "Farewell Farewell" sound much better than on the original vinyl album.
An often overlooked song, "The Deserter", was actually the song that got me into the band; a great tune beautifully sung by Sandy Denny. |
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| "Here's what I hear" | 2007-01-12 |
| - Reviewed By npratt3 |
| An album with a crucial sound for the time, and quite lovely. BUT: While Sandy Denny has a great voice, she tends to sound the same song to song. Steeleye Span's Maddy Prior, for example, is more distinctive and flexible. As well, the songs on LIEGE AND LIEF tend to be of a standard 4/4 rock beat, though the album is hailed as the premiere or seminal English folk-rock recording. That's wrong. Not enough variation, not enough flowing with the texures and beats of the traditional material they play. For those who hear this jewel but would like something more of the traditional folk spirit you detect, try BELOW THE SALT, by Steeleye Span. It's that band's best album and it subtracts about 40% of the rock element. Felt more by far is the influence Ashley Hutchings, founder of both bands. |
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| "What a cool album!" | 2006-11-30 |
| - Reviewed By knappeg |
This album is a great example of Fairport Convention making a characteristically British stamp on the emerging genre of folk-rock. It's comprised mainly of actual folk songs from the isles, but the band takes possession of each song and works it up into rocking, uptempo music that is unique compared with any American folk rock of the time.
The album opener, "Come All Ye," pretty much lays it out there, introducing the band members and telling the listener that the music is going to get you dancing (or at least swaying) and singing or humming. What follows are some really progressive folk songs that range from ballads, like the exciting "Matty Groves" (which, incidentally, rocks pretty hard at the ending instrumental section), the heavy riffing of "Tam Lin" (which must have been an influence on Jethro Tull), and the tragic "Crazy Man Michael," love songs like "Farewell, Farewell," and a great instrumental medley.
Musically, Sandy Denny's voice is great and the guitar work is a highlight. They manage to deftly combine acoustic instrumentation and more trippy electric instruments, yet still stay true to the British folk music and stories that underly it all. I'd recommend this to fans of Tull and Pentangle, but also to folk rock fans of bands like the Byrds and Dylan who are interested in stretching their horizons past American folk and blues to find rewarding folk from across the pond. Check it out, it's cheap! |
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| "A perfect pairing with traditional ales!" | 2006-11-01 |
| - Reviewed By loce_the_wizard |
For my money, "Liege and Lief" remains the best of the many recordings issued under the name Fairport Convention, a band which has experienced myriad shifts in personnel and sound over the band's broad span.
Several factors contributed to this excellence. One was the strong line up featuring no less than Richard Thompson, Sandy Denny, Dave Mattacks, Ashley Hutchings, Simon Nicol, and Dave Swarbrick--a group of folks that in one way or another established and perpetuated the English folk music revival that followed (and continues).
The music and times cannot be separated, for great music was being generated on both sides of the Atlantic back in 1969, and musicians were keen to do their best for the sake of creating music. Third, "Liege and Lief" was a unique rendering--partly wonderful folk, partly swashbuckling rock and roll--and as such the band was not imitating (consciously or not) other bands in this genre.
Finally, this music is a perfect pairing with traditional ales!
All musing aside, the opening notes of Come All Ye still stirs the soul and sounds strong and clear.
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