Review Summary: Come all ye rolling minstrels, And together we will try, To rouse the spirit of the air, And move the rolling sky.
Liege and Lief is an English folk album. Maybe this doesn’t say a whole lot, but trying to pinpoint what makes English folk so identifiably English becomes a surprisingly thorny job, when compared to traditional American folk. You can easily recognize that there is a difference between an English and an American folk album that runs deeper than the accents, but to say what that quality might be is a little tougher to pin down. The melting pot quality of American folk music in contrast to that of England might stand out the most; after all American folk can be conceptualized as a hodge-podge of every disparate cultural influence to have been pilfered, plundered, gifted, borrowed, impacted, battered and fried into a fine American mess. But the history of the singers themselves may be the deepest starting point: two diverging traditions and histories, two different outlooks on life, two different understandings of the hardship, love and oppression that are at the center of much of all folk music, whatever its culture of origin.
While America was expanding across the continent, England was industrializing. In England, the people making and singing folk music were being uprooted from the rural life that had defined them for centuries and moving to an urban world that had no place for the understanding of the world that agrarian life had given them. Only thing that stayed the same was the perennial shafting the have-nots received from the haves. Much the same in America. But while American folk music could sing of expansion and exploration as a possible source of liberation, the English poor (or at least those who had no recourse to emigration) was left with the class struggle as their primary hope for liberation, a fact that bears itself out in much of the subject matter of folk songs of the period. Songs relate heavily to the tribulations of the have-nots in their relation to the haves, themes of injustice and celebration of the underclass getting one over on their superiors abound. Small wonder that the 60s folk revival, in a time when the open defiance of authority was perhaps at its zenith, took these antique themes and molded them to the contemporary zeitgeist.
Liege and Lief wasn’t quite the group’s first foray into the world of traditional English folk; previous release Unhalfbricking was rife with traditional songs and lyrics, but on that record, they’re still heavily indebted to their psychedelic roots and their former rock leanings are still very much apparent. Liege and Lief marks a headlong plunge into the British folk tradition, drawing heavily from the songbooks and folklorists of the 19th century who had sought to preserve an art form that had a dubious future in the face of England’s rapid industrialization. The reactionary quality of the revival of these folk themes is apparent, the defiance of political and corporate machinations in favor of a more organic and personal relationship to humanity and history run through the very idea of a folk music revival.
But while the songs themselves are firmly planted in the idiom of folk, the execution on Liege and Lief is still scattershot with rock sensibilities, courtesy, in large part, of Richard Thompson, who peppers the album with blues-tinged electric guitar licks and stomping chords. Likewise, drummer Dave Mattacks is playing firmly within the confines of late 60s rock music, his drum patterns an unadorned and workmanlike framework for the rest of the music. Aside from the songs themselves, the most apparent folk influence comes from the clear, unadorned vocal stylings of Sandy Denny, her voice sounding like she was born to sing alongside Dave Swarbrick’s tumbling fiddle runs. Sandy’s contributions to the music are the heart and soul of Fairport Convention’s sound; it’s the kind of voice that, once you’ve heard it, defines the songs that it’s set to.
For folk purists, the lingering flirtations with hard-edged rock tropes might do Liege and Lief its greatest disservice; if there’s a claim to be made that the album hasn’t aged all that gracefully, it’s probably best supported by the occasionally out of place electric guitar lick or the basic 60s rock drum patterns, which really don’t harm the music so much as pigeonhole it as a product of its time. But it’s also debatable whether this even counts as a knock against the album; after all, artistic progress in a genre is usually informed by outside sources and a well-integrated bit of innovation can be a breath of fresh air in a genre that is easily stereotyped for stodgy conservatism and an uncritical embrace of all that is provincial and corny. Lord knows I’ve had to check myself as to whether what I’m listening to is really “””authentic folk””” or just reheated Ren Faire-tier schlock. But at first listen it’s hard to say that the music of Liege and Lief is timeless and universal in the way that Nick Drake or even Bert Jansch might be. But in a way, the project that Liege and Leif is carrying out has to be the product of its time that it ends up being.
Hearing the anthemic call-to-arms of Come All Ye, and the hope behind it in its call to “rouse the spirit of the earth”, is nothing less than inspiring in its very naivety, in its hope that one can find hope for the future in turning towards the simple resolute spirit of the past. The sly, cynical wink of Mattie Groves, in which a noble is cuckolded by a commoner carries with it its own kernel of hope in that although he has his revenge, the inviolability of the nobleman’s position has been made a mockery of by the murdered Mattie Groves. The comedic element of the Deserter, in which a conscript runs from battle and is condemned to be shot, only to be saved by an unkowing nobleman who says he would make a good soldier speaks to the tenacity of the lower class in its struggle not just to survive, but to carve out a place to live. In these folk songs, in spite of their tales of suffering and struggle, a current of hope runs through, the defiance of lives that will to do more than survive, but seek to live. It’s a theme that was probably no more resonant than in the 60s, and which perhaps might begin to resonate again. The possibility of hope and liberation in the sly, defiant simplicity of folk music might still be a dead dream, but one can hope that the bottomless cynicism of our ages artistic expression might one day find itself confronted by something that is willing to find its expression in the idea that there are things still worth believing in.
