Widely considered to be one of the finest Fairport albums (despite Joe Boyd's deprecating sleevenotes on the newly-reissued sister album, "House Full - Live at the LA Troubadour"), this one was recorded by Richard Thompson, Simon Nicol, and Daves Pegg, Swarbrick and Mattacks in the Spring of 1970. This celebrated line-up (which occasionally reforms at Fairport's annual Cropredy Festival) cut only this album in the studio (although the aforementioned "House Full - Live at the LA Troubadour" features them in concert, as does "The Cropredy Box", featuring them a full twenty-seven years on from cutting this album), so "Full House" is where this incarnation of Fairport's reputation largely rests.
The album is, by and large, superb. The Swarbrick/Thompson originals are of top quality, and among these, the heavy, dark "Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman" is finally reinstated to its rightful place on the album (although whether Richard Thompson still believes it has no place upon the record remains to be seen).
As to the reels, jigs and other traditional pieces here, the only-recently unearthed version of "The Bonny Bunch of Roses" (predating the version another Fairport recorded as an album's title-track by seven years) is superb, recalling such droning, modal material as "A Sailor's Life".
When taken as a whole, this reissue is near faultless. An outstanding original LP, remastered excellently, bolstered with stellar bonus material such as "Now be Thankful" and the snappily-titled "Sir B. McKenzie's Daughter's Lament for the 77th Mounted Lancers Retreat from the Straits of Loch Knombe, in the Year of Our Lord 1727, on the Occasion of the Announcement of Her Marriage to the Laird of Kinleakie", and a freshly-written sleevenote by Simon Nicol (augmenting Richard Thompson's humourous mediaeval sports report which came with the original album). Fairport fans and neophytes alike: buy with confidence.