LIEGE & LIEF

I am having trouble understanding the middling rating which this album has received. I think that this album is perfect. I love the two records that preceded this one, but I feel that the amazing musicianship and songwriting developed with the previous records really received a shot in the arm through the group's wholesale adoption of British folk music forms and themes. It it a credit to the band that they avoid some of the more precious trappings into which other bands playing in the realm of medieval rock have fallen. Even though they play with traditional forms, Fairport Convention never forget that they are playing rock and roll. With epics like Tam Linn and Matty Groves, the band also presents a remarkable command of narrative songcraft and performance that plays as both high theater and kick ass rock and roll. Rollicking, moving, beautiful, and sometime very, very sad, Liege and Lief is one of Progressive Rock's true masterpieces.