The Affair

After the failure of Gottle O'Geer, a poor, unfocussed album, some core members of Fairport arranged a new record deal and decided to have some fun, having accepted their place in the musical world. Let by fiddler Dave Swarbrick and guitarist Simon Nicol, they made a couple of fun, unpretentious and surprisingly rocking electric folk albums in this and Tippler's Tales. The album features a couple of sets of vigorous jigs and reels, as always, but also some great choices of vocal material, particularly the title track, a 12.5 minute tale of the Napoleonic wars.

In some ways, Murder Ballads is the record Nick Cave was waiting to make his entire career. Death and violence have always haunted his music, even when he wasn't explicitly singing about the subject. On Murder Ballads, he sings about nothing but death in the most gruesome, shocking fashion…