Close to the Wind
is a compilation drawn from
Fairport Convention
's 16th and 17th albums,
Red & Gold
(December 1988) and
The Five Seasons
(December 1990), boasting eight of the 11 songs from the former and eight of the ten from the latter, re-sequenced. On these albums, originally released in the U.S. by the
Rough Trade
label, the quintet of guitarist
Simon Nicol
, bass player
Dave Pegg
, multi-instrumentalist
Martin Allcock
, violinist
Ric Sanders
, and drummer
Dave Mattacks
staked a claim for the reunited full-time band. It was a tight unit in which
Nicol
took most of the lead vocals, singing well on the combination of
traditional folk
songs and borrowed originals by such writers as
Ralph McTell
,
Bob Dylan
, and
Huw Williams
, with powerful instrumentals led by
Allcock
and
Sanders
. The strongest track on either album, and thus on this one, is
"Red and Gold,"
McTell
's reminiscence of the English Civil War of the 17th century, as fought in Cropredy, not coincidentally the site of
's annual
folk
festival. There is also an excellent reading of
Dylan
's
Basement Tapes
-era
"Open the Door, Richard."
Not all of the songs come up to that standard, however, and the editing to get the two albums onto one disc eliminates several tunes written by
. Still, this is a good collection of late-'80s/early-'90s
. ~ William Ruhlmann