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Unhalfbricking | 
| Artist: Fairport Convention
Label: Commercial Marketing
Category: Music
List Price: £5.99
Buy New: £4.37
You Save: £1.62 (27%)
New (46) Used (6) from £3.44
Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 1887
Format: Original Recording Remastered
Media: Audio CD
Running Time: 48
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
UPC: 044006359625
EAN: 0044006359625
ASIN: B00007J36V
Release Date: March 3, 2003
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Tracks:
| • | Genesis Hall | | • | Si Tu Dois Partir | | • | Autopsy | | • | A Sailor's Life | | • | Cajun Woman | | • | Who Knows Where The Time Goes? | | • | Percy's Song | | • | Million Dollar Bash | | • | Dear Landlord | | • | Ballad Of Easy Rider |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
Unhalfbricking marked a turning-point for Fairport Convention and is a definitive amalgam of their influences. The three Bob Dylan songs featured look to their past as a band predominantly influenced by American folk, rock & roll and singer-songwriters such as Joni Mitchell and Dylan himself. "Si Tu Dois Partir", a French-language version of Dylan's "If You Gotta Go Go Now", was their only hit single and their shared singing on a rave-up version of "Million Dollar Bash" provides a fitting finale to the album. Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson were quite possibly the best female vocalist and best guitarist the UK has ever produced, but at this stage they were also budding songwriters of extraordinary potency. They each contributed two songs, showcasing a lyrical and musical vision beyond their years. Thompson's spellbinding "Genesis Hall" opens the album, his "Cajun Woman" provides a raunchy diversion into authentically swampy music. Denny contributes "Autopsy" and "Who Knows Where The Time Goes"; the first is an early jazz-influenced number, the second one of the most stunning songs she ever wrote. The final part of the jigsaw is the 11-minute "A Sailor's Life", representing the future of the band. A folk song that Sandy knew, they transmuted it to stunning effect, showcasing Thompson's guitar playing alongside the searing violin of eclectic folkie Dave Swarbrick in a long electric workout to close the tune. Swarbrick enjoyed the result so much that he joined the band. An authentically timeless album and quite possibly the place to start (though not to stop) if you have never before heard any Fairport Convention. --James Swift
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
A drum-roll for Martin Lamble August 6, 2007
1 out of 8 found this review helpful
Much of this album serves for me as a testimony to the wonderful drumming of Martin Lamble, that feathery touch and those rolls, often playing underneath the music, or just riding the beat. There was something shimmering (and almost held-back) in the music of their live gigs, with the texture lying between the drums and the bass playing. Lamble was an extraordinary player for a 19 year old. This album is also a melancholy listen: I still remember hearing them shortly afterwards with Dave Mattacks's embarassing drumming, and the music suddenly sounded so crude and so unlovely.
A Fantastic Album, Now Even Better. May 1, 2007
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
The problem with this album is that it always seemed to suffer, slightly, when compared to "What We Did on Our Holidays". Stylistically the albums form a natural pairing, but whereas its predecessor is a near perfect album, with every track complimenting each other perfectly, it always seemed to me that "Unhalfbricking" was by comparison a rather fractured affair with its various parts pulling the listener, a little too sharply, in different directions. In an odd way, it always felt as if it was only half a great record, but saying which bits are lacking is hard, as they all seem good or great when taken in isolation.
On the other hand the quality of most of its parts (if not the sum) is at a level most artists can only dream of. I should also point out that none of the above prevented this from becoming, and remaining, one of my best loved albums.
I believe that with the release of this version, the album has finally attained the balance it always needed, with the addition of the bonus tracks added for this release. They give the album that little more time required to absorb its disparate elements. With the addition of 'The Ballad of Easy Rider'(the best version of this song I have heard) the album finally has the majestic closing number it always needed and acts as a counterweight to the mighty 'A Sailor's Life' which seemed overly dominant at the center of the disc .
I already owned the previous CD version so it was with some reservations that I bought this one (only, in the end, because I needed to hear Sandy Denny's take on 'The Ballad of Easy Rider'), but I am glad I took the gamble. I always loved this album but now it's better than ever.
 Fairport Transition September 17, 2006
21 out of 21 found this review helpful
As Ashley Hutchings says in the notes, this 3rd Fairport album contains various different styles that somehow, by luck?, hang very well together.
It`s an album that ends the beginning era of the band. With the following album "Liege and Leaf", also released in 1969, Fairport Convention established themselves as pioneers of English folk rock.
On the this album there are still clear influences from American country, pop and rock`n roll. Songs like "Cajun Woman" and "Million Dollar Bash" would not have fitted later Fairport releases.
This is an album of transition. The last to feature drummer Martin Lamble, who sadly was killed in a car-accident, and singer Ian Matthews.
Longtime member Dave Swarbrick appears here for the first time, though only as studio musician on four songs. But his influence cannot be overrated; check out "A Sailor`s Life" . New drummer Dave Mattacks also appears for the first time, though only on one of the bonus tracks, which is actually an outtake from "Liege and Leaf"
Sandy Denny contributes classics like "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" and "Autopsy".
Richard Thompson`s best song here is "Genesis Hall".
My favourite is Dylan`s "Percy Song" with it`s beautiful vocals and great building up!
The band`s only hit record "Si Tu Dois Partir" is also there. It's a free-and-easy cover of Dylan's "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"
Both bonus tracks a good, fit the rest of the album fine!
Perhaps my favourite Fairport LP. September 2, 2006
19 out of 25 found this review helpful
It begins with a burst of psychedelic guitar bending - care of the young Richard Thompson - and ends with a rousing and raucous version of Dylan's Million Dollar Bash. The 2003 re-issue offers two extra tracks - also associated with Dylan - which somehow manage to make this version of the album feel more "complete" than the original eight-track release from 1969. It helps that one of these songs is a cover of The Ballad of Easy Rider, which finds the ethereal vocals of Sandy Denny whispering hushed tales of rivers flowing to the sea, while outside the hippie dream lays dying in a ditch (shot by hillbillies on a road to nowhere). The rest of the album rides a similar wave, tip-toeing between drunken sing-along folk rockers like the French-language Dylan update Si Tu Dois Partir, the rousing Cajun Woman and the aforementioned Million Dollar Bash, with more reflective, melancholic numbers, like Genesis Hall, Percy's Song and that gorgeous classic, Who Knows Where the Time Goes?
Though well received and well-respected amongst fans of 60's rock and folk, Unhalfbricking is, regardless, an album that sometimes gets overlooked within the wider aspects of the Fairport cannon (...perhaps because it was sandwiched between their pivotal second album, What We Did on Our Holidays, and their landmark fourth release, Liege and Leif... or perhaps due to the various tragedies that would befall the band immediately after it's initial release?). For me, it is the album that would really establish the classic Fairport sound, fusing the psychedelic rock inflections of their earlier Jefferson Airplane-inspired phase with the traditional folk style that would become more refined on the albums that followed. The bridge between these two very different musical worlds would be the music of Bob Dylan, with three of the songs on the original album stemming from Dylan's formidable collection of outtakes and cast offs. It is to the credit of the band that they purposely chose material that was less familiar to listeners than the likes of Chimes of Freedom, The Girl from North Country, Blowin' in the Wind, All Along the Watchtower and It Ain't Me, Babe. Like The Byrds, Hendrix and subsequently Bryan Ferry, the Convention take Dylan's originals and advance on them... bringing a sound, style and musical ideology of their own... so, instead of feeling like obvious cover versions, they blend beautifully with the more traditional numbers, and the fine songs of Thompson and Denny.
It's a further testament to the band that both Thompson and Denny could pen songs that far surpassed anything of Dylan's early period; with Thompson contributing the rousing opening track Genesis Hall and Denny offering her signature song, the aforementioned Who Knows Where the Time Goes? Added to this, we also have the traditional piece, A Sailor's Life; a folk rock standard that finds the band moving more towards the sound of The Doors than The Dubliners, with Fairport stretching things to the eleven minute mark as Denny's peerless vocals merge with the wild guitar playing of Thompson, which in turn, would blend seamlessly with the ace fiddling skills of Dave Swarbrick and the impeccable performances of the rest of the band. The song is one of the most astounding things Fairport Convention ever committed to record, with the song becoming more and more hypnotic in its approach and never pulling back... just continuing to escalate into a real muscular groove (and who said folkies couldn't be funky?). It sets the template for their next album, the hugely successful Liege and Leif and for epic songs like Matty Groves and Tam Lin, which both take the idea of tradition folk ballads performed with a 60's rock flavour, and pushed them that little bit further with the inventive arrangement skills of the band and the achingly beautiful voice of the wonderful Sandy Denny.
Unhalfbricking is perhaps less complete in its structure than later albums like Liege and Leif and the equally great (though much less talked about) Full House, and yet, it remains my personal favourite LP (of the ones I own). The first time I heard this album I was wandering aimlessly around the village where I live in the pouring rain. The combination of the pastoral setting, the melancholic mood, the carelessness of walking in a sudden downpour and the full splendour of the sound of Fairport Convention came together to create one of my most treasured moments of solitude!! Ulhalfbricking is a great album, and is probably (along with What We Did on Our Holidays) one of the best introductions to the wonders of Fairport Convention, as well as a fine introduction into the fantastic worlds of Richard Thompson and the late, great Sandy Denny. The great (and quite iconic) covert art, with the band sat in the back garden of the house of Denny's parents (devoid of any typeface or 60's iconography) is well worth the price of purchase alone.
The birth of folk/rock May 24, 2004
17 out of 19 found this review helpful
This album is credited with kick-starting the whole folk/rock boom of the late 60's but really, it was the addition of Dave Swarbrick on just a couple of tracks that made the difference. As well as the genre defining "A Sailor's Life" this album also includes the superb "Genesis Hall" and one of Sandy's finest songs, "Autopsy". Not in the same league as "Liege & Lief" but a brave step on from the first 2 albums and still utterly essential.
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