SENSE OF OCCASION

In the continuing up and down world of late era Fairport albums, Sense of Occasion once again finds the band on a downward slope after scaling the heights with Over The Next Hill released just two short years earlier. It seems to me that whenever Fairport stumbles upon the formula for some good to outstanding folk rock, they either lose the formula or lose their inspiration. Over The Next Hill showed off the group's new found penchant for superb vocal harmonies and exotic (for Fairport!) percussion added to the sound mix. However, Sense Of Occasion has none of that as the band relies on their old musical formulas at making serious but staid sounding folk rock. Which does work well is remakes of older Fairport songs such as "Polly On The Shore", from the album Nine and "Tam Lin" from the famous Liege and Leif album. Both songs being resurrected by Fairport for guitarist Simon Nicol to sing at the many Fairport reunions and celebrations that the current group line up finds themselves at these days. What doesn't work is the newer material written by multi instrumentalist Chris Leslie or cherry picked songs for Nicol to sing as they seem to be performed a bit too reverently, for lack of a better description. Which is a shame as songs like "Keep On Turning The Wheel", "North Dakota to Manchester" "In Our Town", and "Edge of The World" could have easily been Fairport classics if the band didn't try so hard to make them just that. Even a cover of XTC's "Love On A Farm Boy's Wages" is too reverent with identical music and Simon Nicol perfectly mimicking Andy Partridge's major to minor key vocalizing on the song's verses and chorus. Too bad as Fairport could have made this disguised folk song their own.

There's worse albums in the Fairport discography than Sense Of Occasion, but that's little reason for owning it. 2 stars.