Expletive Delighted!

Expletive Delighted! is the 15th studio album by folk rock band Fairport Convention. It is the band's only album consisting solely of instrumental tracks, despite the claim "Lyric sheet enclosed" on the album cover.

Contents

• Side one
• Side two
• Release history
• Personnel
• Songs
• References

Ric Sanders, who had played on some tracks on the previous album Gladys' Leap, was invited to join Fairport full-time, as was Maartin Allcock; the result, according to Dave Pegg,

"Ric and Maart were both writing stuff, composing these great instrumental pieces. I thought we should do something immediately, catch the moment. So we put out an all instrumental album, Expletive Delighted. I really wanted to show everyone just what these new chaps could do, how brilliantly they could play. ... The line-up meant we could tour again, it meant we had new material for Cropredy, it meant there was a Fairport again. So from 1986 on, Cropredy wasn't just a reunion festival any more. We had a band."

This new lineup would last for the next eleven years, the most stable of all of Fairport's configurations to that point.

Allmusic's reviewer described Expletive Delighted! as "alternately enjoyable and maddening", criticising the prominence of Dave Mattacks's drums in the mix, while praising "Portmeirion" and the title track as "delicate and beautiful as any work that this version of the band has done".