Sandy Denny has a beautiful voice- she's one of my favorite female vocalists, and I don't say that just because she appeared on Led Zeppelin's fourth album. Aside from folk and psychedelic, Fairport Convention displays some jazzy-blues notes particularly on "Autopsy". Interestingly, "Autopsy" is one of three tracks on the album written by Bob Dylan that were unreleased before Unhalfbricking came about. I won't say I know everything about Bob Dylan, but I've never heard him play a song like this before. It's very pub-rocky.
I was ready to complain about "A Sailor's Life" being too improvisational and spacey. To be fair, for the first three minutes the song consisted of Denny quietly singing while her band mates jangled around without real purpose in the background. Thankfully the instrumentals began picking up after that and gave the song some energy. I'm not entirely sure the payoff was worth such a slow buildup, as the song closes with a 4-minute hippie-ish jam that isn't quite rousing. Still I've heard far more pointless 11-minute songs in my years.
Side 2 kicks off with "Cajun Woman", an unfortunate mix of surfer music and folk instruments, like fiddles and accordians. It's just as bad as it sounds. Following is perhaps Sandy Denny's signature song "Who Knows Where The Time Goes". It has been covered by a number of artists, but I can't imagine any of those being better than this one. After all, this one is sung by Sandy Denny. Why mess with perfection?
The album closes with a couple decent Bob Dylan covers. I'm glad I was eventually able to find a copy of this album to review. Unhalfbricking came up in my random order a few months ago but it wasn't readily available. This is a really solid late 60s rock album and if you haven't heard it yet you should. 4 stars.
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