Thus far, 2004 has not been a vintage year for venerable English folk-rockers Fairport Convention. Their website glumly tells the story: bass player Dave Pegg is getting divorced, both necessitating the sale of his collection of guitars and signalling the end of the band's festival Cropready. Another turbulent chapter in a turbulent history: three former members are dead, including legendary vocalist Sandy Denny.

What's left is grizzled in a very English way: they look like a pub darts team, up in London from their rural local for a hotly-contested quarter final. Worryingly, Fairport Convention positively ooze rock-star glamour when compared with their audience, most of whom appear to have been transported to the South Bank direct from the set of an early-70s Open University programme. There is much chuckling through beards about the band and audience's appearance, and their lack of commercial success. "Fairport Convention had a hit single in 1969," reminisces Pegg. Guitarist Simon Nicol spits water across the stage in mock astonishment.

When they were at the height of their powers, Fairport Convention did more than any band to divest its listeners of the belief that folk was essentially easy listening with added real ale. On 1968's A Sailor's Life, they sounded like nothing so much as the Velvet Underground attempting to play a traditional air. Thirty-six years on, only one person who played on that record is still in the band - Nicol - and some of the edges have been rounded off. At their worst, Fairport Convention sound like a twee confection of soft-rock balladry and traditional instrumentation. Then, quite unexpectedly, they shift gear. The instrumental Portmerrion is lovely rather than quaint, decorated with echoing violin by Ric Sanders. As befits a song in which two people get stabbed to death, their version of Matty Groves is genuinely ferocious. As it rages to a close, you suspect that Fairport Convention have the mettle to survive their current upheavals.