Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Richard Thompson Available Now
UPDATE 2026
This remastered pressing came out in 2000, which is probably the year we reviewed it and started to carry it. I thought it sounded very good at the time, but that was a long time ago! We were often fooled back in the old pre-shootout days, and there is no sense pretending otherwise because we have the embarrassing catalog entries to prove it.
What we could do back then and what we can do now, after decades of constant improvement, are as different as night from day, a subject we write about under the heading of audio progress.
I’ve also made a habit of admitting my mistakes in the hopes that other audiophile reviewers would consider following suit. (To my knowledge this has yet to happen, but hope springs eternal.)
Our 2000 Review
This 180 gram LP comes recommended, with very good English sound (smooth, rich) for this early Richard Thompson folk music, with the wonderful Sandy Denny on vocals. Happily, not your standard audiophile fare.
A 5 Star Rave Review in the All Music Guide!
Unhalfbricking was, if only in retrospect, a transitional album for the young Fairport Convention, in which the group shed its closest ties to its American folk-rock influences and started to edge toward a more traditional British folk-slanted sound. That shift wouldn’t be definitive until their next album, Liege & Lief. But the strongest link to the American folk-rock harmony approach left with the departure of Ian Matthews, who left shortly after the sessions for Unhalfbricking began. The mixture of obscure American folk-rock songs, original material, and traditional interpretations that had fallen into place with What We Did on Our Holidays earlier in the year was actually still intact, if not as balanced.
Sandy Denny’s two compositions, her famous “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” and the far less celebrated but magnetically brooding “Autopsy,” were among the record’s highlights. So too were the goofball French Cajun cover of Bob Dylan’s “If You Gotta Go, Go Now” (here retitled “Si Tu Dois Partir,” and a British hit) and the magnificent reading of Dylan’s “Percy’s Song.
Genesis Hall
Si Tu Dois Partir
Autopsy
A Sailor’s Life
Cajun Woman
Who Knows Where the Time Goes?
Percy’s Song
Million Dollar Bash