Album Reviews

Like a musical Old Faithful, Richard Thompson dependably spews an album’s worth of inspired material at regular intervals. He’s been doing this since 1972’s Henry the Human Fly (Island ILPS 9197), which is so deserving of a high quality all-analog reissue.

Perhaps Thompson would disagree, but his basic approach to songwriting, singing and playing hasn’t changed all that much, nor did it need to. Like James Taylor, he arrived on the scene in Fairport Convention as one of those rare, fully formed talents with a unique, easily identifiable guitar sound and vocal style. Age has diminished neither his manual dexterity nor his vocal chords's suppleness. He sounds remarkably unchanged by time.

Unlike Taylor, Thompson never lost his dark, hard edge or his wicked sense of humor. If anything, the years have only sharpened his edges while adding facets to his sophistication.

His latest double gusher (issued last year on CD) provides evidence to those claims. While the quality of his work rarely varies and the vibe remains constant, Thompson does mess around with attitude, moving from introspective, folky balladry and arrangement- complexity, to plain old rocking hard, which is what he mostly delivers here, most of which is simply arranged for bass, guitar and drums.

This album is one of Thompson’s most focused and inspired works in quite some time. Given his dependable output that’s saying something! The songwriting is his strongest in memory, both lyrically and especially melodically.

While some of his contemporaries simply can’t seem to get it up for a good melody anymore (Bowie, Townshend, Gabriel), Thompson produces an entire album’s worth of mesmerizing ones here.

The set deals mostly with departing, breaking up and death and does so without resorting to maudlin sentiments or the need to tug on heart strings. Thompson survives and prospers artistically in a tough world, steeling himself with a tart tongue and dagger guitar lines.

“Needle And Thread,” about a womanizer who plays the field and though he constantly gets pulled apart and needs to be stitched together, goes back for more, is the rollicking, mood-setting opener.

There’s a tune about a long held grudge (“I’ll Never Give Up”), a hilarious dagger of a song (“Mr. Stupid”) sung to an ex in which he carps about “signing the checks" and “handing (over) that mink,” and expresses his general divorce process disgust (Thompson slyly identifies the protagonist’s ex-wife’s age at the time of the divorce [37] to let anyone interested know that the song isn’t autobiographical since Linda was 35 when they divorced, but he makes the age close enough for discomfort!).

“Dad’s Gonna Kill Me,” a soldier’s eye view of fighting in Iraq is the tune that sets off the album title. “Poppy Red,” is a widower’s lament features one of Thompson’s best mid-tempo rockers in some time.

The guitar/bass/drum arrangements are supplemented only by an occasional fiddle or sax and background vocals supplied by the very talented Judith Owen, who is a Thompson friend and wife of Harry Shearer.

The album is very well-recorded in the “modern” sense and mixed to produce great clarity of instrumental line. No doubt it was mastered from a (high rez?) digital source though and may be a completely digital production. If so, it demonstrates that digital has improved a great deal since the dark old days since the record develops decent depth (listen to the distant rim shots placed well back in the stage) and the cymbals chime without crunch.

On the other hand, there’s still a slight bit of a ‘recordy’ quality to the production that separates it from the old AAA ones capable of producing lights out “believability.” At least this one shows progress back toward what we used to have that’s been lost.

Judged by today’s standards this is a great recording. Judged by today’s musical standards it’s a masterpiece. Judged by yesterday’s it still is! In his 36 years of making memorable albums Sweet Warrior may be Thompson’s finest, though for youthful exuberance and heart tugging emotion that first one and especially the tune “The Angels Took My Race Horse Away” (which I played and bawled like an idiot after Barbaro was put down), gets me every time!

One mystery: the identities of the two fiddle players on “She Sang Angels to Rest” credited as “Joe Buck” and “Al Michaels.” Ha ha ha.

An attractive gate-fold package and a credit and lyric sheet you can actually read add to the package’s attractiveness. Highest recommendation!