Album Reviews

Thompson’s first acoustic solo album (with overdubbed guitars and some keyboards added by Debra Dobkin) in many years is as the title and cover art promises, an intimate drawing room recital by a seemingly timeless artist who doesn’t get better with time because he dropped in seemingly fully formed during his Fairport Convention days much as James Taylor did on his first Apple solo album.

Still in abundance are Thompson’s sly humor and his wicked, cynical eye for detail in this triumphant song cycle about unrequited love, courting, betrayal, forgiveness, heartache, and occasional cruelty, all told with at best casual sympathy but much humanity.

Thompson goes hunting with a sharp knife and never comes home without a kill or with a bleeding heart. Lyrically and melodically, he is more compact, lean and wirey than he was 34 years ago on Henry The Human Fly. His guitar playing remains impeccable and thrilling.

The back cover has Thompson as Hamlet in the parlour putting a magnifying glass to poor Yorick the jester’s skull. When he sings about a fatal attraction on the opener “Let It Blow,” and refers to the pair as “mystically joined, like Rawicz and Landauer” at least we have the internet to look up the reference.

However this was recorded technologically, esthetically it’s superb: vividly drawn, harmonically rich, cleanly but not clinically rendered and texturally supple. As befitting a parlour recital, the miking is close, and the perspective is intimate.

The quality of the physical presentation matches the sonics: perfectly quiet surfaces, nicely laminated gatefold jacket—everything you could want in a recording worth treasuring back in 1972 and forward to 2006.

This set bristles with excitement and high energy every play. Well worth picking up for all the right reasons. If you’re not familiar with Thompson (it’s possible you know), this is as good a place to start as any, it’s that good.