The idea of a four-disc box set seems a bizarre inversion for a band who in their short time together managed to release only one album.
And yet, the fact that 45 years later we still bother to remember Fotheringay is testimony to the band’s importance in the admittedly limited folk-rock canon generally and, more pertinently, in the sweet and sour career of legendary English singer Sandy Denny.
By 1978, Denny would be dead at 31 – a cruel combination of bad habits and bad luck – but 10 years earlier, in the space of about 30 months, she made her indelible mark first with Fairport Convention – in particular the 1969 albums Unhalfbricking and Liege and Lief – and then the eponymous Fotheringay (1970). She formed this band with future husband Trevor Lucas after Fairport effectively sacked her (she could be difficult), and their first and only album forms the spine of this collection.
This might imply slim pickings, but those anoraks who have kept the flame burning for 45 years will find much to savour in these 48 tracks plus four rare videos of the band. Denny said she left Fairport to explore her songwriting, so it's not without irony that her finest Fotheringay moment was the traditional ballad The Banks of the Nile. Her voice is haunting, transformative, turning a simple lyric and tune into an epic story of the human cost of imperial adventure. It is easy to agree with critic Richard Williams that it is "one of the great moments of British music".
That one album wears the years well – with hindsight the band's fluid playing served her well . Fotheringay 2, compiled from bits and pieces and released in 2008, invariably lacks the same substance, though the versions of Silver Threads and Golden Needles, Wild Mountain Thyme and her own John the Gun are exceptional. There are 10 previously unreleased tracks, though these are either live or BBC recordings of the same core material.
It is a stretch, and much of this material does turn up on other compilations, but somehow it seems right that Fotheringay is belatedly remembered in its own right.
