Album Reviews

Issued in 1982 as the couple were going through a painful divorce, Richard and Linda Thompson’s Shoot Out The Lights became an immediate critic’s “must have” album. Despite the wildly enthusiastic world-wide press and the couple’s brave decision to tour in support of the album despite their personal acrimony, it was never a big seller.

Originally issued on Hannibal (mastered at Sterling) and reissued on Carthage shortly thereafter (mastered at Masterdisk), and distributed by Rykodisc on CD, LP and even a gold CD, Shoot Out The Lights has never had what I consider to be a definitive issue. Until now. This 4 Men With Beards is the one to have, and believe me I have them all, including a Japanese original, which until now was my reference. It’s still great but the new 4 Men With Beards issue offer greater transparency, suppleness and harmonic riches.

While RT denies the tunes were written about the couple’s marital problems, they resonate unmistakably with their personal issues and events, not that it matters because 24 years later the album retains its power unconnected to real events.

The smoldering opener, “Don’t Renege On Our Love,” is an impassioned plea for re-kindling love. On it Thompson demonstrates why he’s one of the greatest guitar players ever (he made it to number 19 on Rolling Stone’s recent “ The 100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time” list), and perhaps the most tasteful and musically elastic electric guitarists.

The distressing “Walking On a Wire” has all the signs pointing in the wrong direction, opening with “I hand you my ball and chain/You just hand me that same old refrain…” The couple’s harmonizing on the chorus “I’m walking on a wire…and I’m falling,” is both agonizing and exquisite.

The album is filled with Thompson’s darkest, most tragic impulses and little of his impish humor. Songs like “Did She Jump or Was She Pushed” hardly offer an opportunity. The last line of “It’s Just the Motion” does deliver some of Thompson’s darkest humor and one of the albums’s tiny shreds of “comfort”: “Don’t worry, under the ocean, At the bottom of the sea, You can’t hear the storm, It’s as peaceful as can be –It’s just the motion.”

The curiously exhilarating closer, “The Wall of Death” (an amusement park ride that’s “the nearest thing to being alive”) does offer a way out of the misery, drawing an analogy between the excitement of a thrill ride and the liberation waiting for the “fictional” couple about to break up and go their separate ways.

The albums’s masterpiece is the sledgehammer-pounding title track, which includes what is arguably Thompson’s best guitar solo ever recorded, and a drum track from Dave Mattacks that is positively nuclear. In fact, all of the backing performers, including Simon Nicol on rhythm guitar, Dave Pegg and Pete Zorn on bass and The Watersons (the Carthy clan) on back up vocals, rise to the occasion.

I went through every pressing on hand to find the best and while both the Japanese (Hannibal YX-7332-HB) and the American Hannibal original mastered at Sterling by, I assume, George Marino, offer greater dynamics than the 4 Men With Beards, they pay a price in some brightness and edge. This new 180g 4 Men With Beards offers the greatest transparency, least edge, and most harmonic fulfillment. It also delivers the best imaging and three-dimensionality.

You can’t go wrong with this reissue and if you’re not familiar with this short, powerful album filled with great performances all around and Richard and Linda’s most exquisite harmonizing.

Highest recommendation!

One of these days I'll post the (separate) interviews I conducted with Richard and Linda the day after their legendary L.A. appearance at The Roxy back in June of 1982.