Revisit:
Richard Thompson
Rumor and Sigh
1991
Revisit is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that now deserve a second look.
Any discussion of Rumor and Sigh invariably starts with "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," generally considered by fans and critics alike to be Richard Thompson's defining song. Set to a traditional English melody and built around a simple folk structure, it tells the story of James Adie - young career criminal, wildly romantic, surprisingly poetic - and Red Molly - the archetypal idealized female, this time with red hair and clad in black leather. As is so often the way in folk music, their relationship seems fated to end tragically, and of course it does. In quick succession Adie gives her a ring, probably stolen, gets himself mortally shotgunned in the chest during a robbery attempt and from his deathbed hallucinates that he sees "angels on Ariels in leather and chrome/ Swooping down from heaven to carry me home" - Heaven's admission requirements are rather lenient in this case. He then gives Molly his motorcycle keys - folk motif/symbol alert! - as his final, dying gesture. It's as close to perfect as a song can get.
But there is much more to Rumor and Sigh than just "1952 Vincent Black Lightning." It is possibly Thompson's most consistent album since 1982's Shoot Out the Lights. Throughout the album its characters externalize a sense of fatalism and foreboding as they find both their relationships and lives in general going to absolute shit. The first order of business for the freshly paroled ex-con in "I Feel So Good" is to "break somebody's heart tonight," as Thompson sneeringly sings. The situation is reversed in both "Why Must I Plead" and "I Misunderstood; in the latter song the female wears the guise of the flirtatious temptress as she mind fucks the living hell of some schmuck: "I thought she was saying good luck/ She was saying goodbye" he mutters in confusion. Similarly, "Keep Your Distance" imagines the principal actors in some failed love story meeting again by chance. Any thoughts of reconciliation are dashed immediately by the male with a sour remark that stands as one of Thompson's most incisive: "Don't grasp my hand and say 'fate has brought you here today'/ Oh fate is only fooling with us, friend."
Several of Thompson's most effectively humorous songs at least temporarily take this edge off and serve as a nice respite from all the doomed and otherwise dysfunctional relationships that litter the record. Rumor and Sigh actually opens with such a song: "Read About Love" takes sexual incompetence as its subject, adding in just a bit of misogyny. The poor fool narrator doesn't get any sex ed proper; instead, he reads about "love" in smut magazines and a book "written by a doctor with a German name." When he can't perform he knows who to blame, and it's not himself: "So why don't you moan and sigh?/ And why do you sit there and cry?/ I do everything I'm supposed to do/ If something's wrong, then it must be you." A somewhat slight song in Thompson's catalog, "Don't Sit on My Jimmy Shands" pays homage to Scottish accordion player Jimmy Shand as well as vinyl records as the musician alternates between pieces of nostalgia ("This one's the Beltona brand/ Finest label in the land/ They don't make them like that anymore") and some lighthearted - by Rumor and Sigh's standards at least - barbs about someone's girth and propensity for inebriation. The perverse or bloody events that transpire in the absurdist drama "Psycho Street" - a man beating off on a train, a wife murdered and dissolved in acid - are so over the top and its actors so stupid that it's impossible not to find the song darkly humorous.
Though Mitchell Froom tends to be treated like a human punching back for his production work on Thompson's albums - most infamously on Daring Adventures - the production here is clean and provides just the right amount of polish to Thompson's mostly dour material. Songs like "You Dream Too Much" and "Mother Knows Best" haven't held up over time, but the majority of the album has, and it's probably Thompson's best effort of the 1990s. It might be heresy to argue that it trumps Shoot Out the Lights, but like that masterpiece, it's an album built around crumbling relationships that sounds as relevant in this century as it did in the last one. "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" rightly casts a large shadow over both Rumor and Sigh and Thompson's entire career; still, that shouldn't be at the expense of the other remarkable songs included on this album.
Showing posts with label Richard Thompson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Richard Thompson. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Thursday, September 09, 2010
Richard Thompson: Dream Attic
Richard Thompson
Dream Attic
Rating: 3.5/5.0
Label: Shout! Factory
In September of 2009, CNN's website published an interview with Richard Thompson under the headline "Richard Thompson, the greatest guitarist you've never heard of." To anyone with the even faintest knowledge of music history, such a headline must have seemed purely absurd, the type of thing aimed entirely at the squares and those corporate desk jockeys who spend their lunch hour on CNN.com. But it's been the easy music journalist's tagline about Thompson for several decades, and I suppose nothing will change it at this point, even if it's mostly bullshit. Though the musician usually only barely scratches the Billboard charts and has made commercial indifference something of an art form, no one can reasonably argue that he's laboring in obscurity either. His shows sell out and his fan base isn't going anywhere until they leave this mortal coil; we're not talking about some starving artist scraping by on peanuts and playing to half-empty dives.
So even if Thompson's latest, the mostly stellar Dream Attic, doesn't make him a household name, that's all right, as it again confirms his standing as one of music's undisputed giants, equally on the level of a Dylan, Springsteen, Waits or Young. With such an extensive back catalog from which to compare, it's too early to definitively say how Dream Attic stacks up against what preceded it, but it has all the characteristics of Thompson's strongest and it's likely years from now it will be considered as one of the musician's most consistent releases. Almost all the major traits that have defined Thompson's albums can be found scattered among its 13 songs. Thompson's biting satirical wit can be found in both leadoff track "The Money Shuffle" and "Here Comes Geordie;" his ability to craft - to borrow his words - wrist-slashing ballads is displayed in "Among the Gorse, Among the Grey" and "Stumble On;" his catalog of murder/crime songs is nicely augmented with "Crimescene" and "Sidney Wells." There are also, of course, deceptively buoyant and catchy songs about dysfunctional relationships and their attendant suspicions and paranoia, in this case "Big Sun Falling in the River." Supported by an ace band that adds horns, strings, percussion and other instrumentation to Thompson's masterful - a true understatement there - guitar work, other songs like "Haul Me Up," "Bad Again" and "If Love Whispers Your Name" should stand up as some of the finest ensemble playing to be had on any Thompson record.
The album was recorded live during a brief West Coast tour in February, and like previous Thompson concert albums the sound and execution are both warmer and more immediate that much of Thompson's studio output, which to me sometimes tend to feel coldly detached and overly produced. Though it's strange that audience applause can be heard before and after only a few songs, Dream Attic unarguably benefits from being recorded live; it's occasionally raw - Thompson's voice cracks on a few tracks - but the musicianship and complete lack of studio embellishments capture what it's like to see Thompson in concert.
Tom Waits has said that his wife jokes that he writes two kinds of songs: grand weepers and grim reapers. This statement could easily apply to Thompson as well - minus the Eyeball Kids and the man with missing fingers who plays a strange guitar - and throughout Dream Attic, it's all too easy to overlook its lyrics among all the instrumental prowess both the band and Thompson exhibit. But there is pure lyrical artistry on this release, via the various barbed insults and plain-old sadness in Thompson's writing, especially in something as achingly moving as "I've learned how long the night is when you're gone" or as Cave-level macabre as "Then he took off her clothes and threw them in a pile/ He watched her stand there cold and shivering for a while/ Then he picked up her stocking lying on the floor/ And wrapped it round her neck until she breathed no more."
The album loses some of its steam after that murder song, but overall it's every bit as worthwhile as Thompson's previous live albums. A handful of tracks here would also fit in well on any serious Best of Thompson compilation. If not quite a masterpiece, Dream Attic offers enough of Thompson's alternately acerbic observations and droll humor and a crack band in peak form to make it required listening for both long-time Thompson fans, newbies and, yes, even the suit-and-tie crowd that get by on a steady diet of CNN.com
Dream Attic
Rating: 3.5/5.0
Label: Shout! Factory
In September of 2009, CNN's website published an interview with Richard Thompson under the headline "Richard Thompson, the greatest guitarist you've never heard of." To anyone with the even faintest knowledge of music history, such a headline must have seemed purely absurd, the type of thing aimed entirely at the squares and those corporate desk jockeys who spend their lunch hour on CNN.com. But it's been the easy music journalist's tagline about Thompson for several decades, and I suppose nothing will change it at this point, even if it's mostly bullshit. Though the musician usually only barely scratches the Billboard charts and has made commercial indifference something of an art form, no one can reasonably argue that he's laboring in obscurity either. His shows sell out and his fan base isn't going anywhere until they leave this mortal coil; we're not talking about some starving artist scraping by on peanuts and playing to half-empty dives.
So even if Thompson's latest, the mostly stellar Dream Attic, doesn't make him a household name, that's all right, as it again confirms his standing as one of music's undisputed giants, equally on the level of a Dylan, Springsteen, Waits or Young. With such an extensive back catalog from which to compare, it's too early to definitively say how Dream Attic stacks up against what preceded it, but it has all the characteristics of Thompson's strongest and it's likely years from now it will be considered as one of the musician's most consistent releases. Almost all the major traits that have defined Thompson's albums can be found scattered among its 13 songs. Thompson's biting satirical wit can be found in both leadoff track "The Money Shuffle" and "Here Comes Geordie;" his ability to craft - to borrow his words - wrist-slashing ballads is displayed in "Among the Gorse, Among the Grey" and "Stumble On;" his catalog of murder/crime songs is nicely augmented with "Crimescene" and "Sidney Wells." There are also, of course, deceptively buoyant and catchy songs about dysfunctional relationships and their attendant suspicions and paranoia, in this case "Big Sun Falling in the River." Supported by an ace band that adds horns, strings, percussion and other instrumentation to Thompson's masterful - a true understatement there - guitar work, other songs like "Haul Me Up," "Bad Again" and "If Love Whispers Your Name" should stand up as some of the finest ensemble playing to be had on any Thompson record.
The album was recorded live during a brief West Coast tour in February, and like previous Thompson concert albums the sound and execution are both warmer and more immediate that much of Thompson's studio output, which to me sometimes tend to feel coldly detached and overly produced. Though it's strange that audience applause can be heard before and after only a few songs, Dream Attic unarguably benefits from being recorded live; it's occasionally raw - Thompson's voice cracks on a few tracks - but the musicianship and complete lack of studio embellishments capture what it's like to see Thompson in concert.
Tom Waits has said that his wife jokes that he writes two kinds of songs: grand weepers and grim reapers. This statement could easily apply to Thompson as well - minus the Eyeball Kids and the man with missing fingers who plays a strange guitar - and throughout Dream Attic, it's all too easy to overlook its lyrics among all the instrumental prowess both the band and Thompson exhibit. But there is pure lyrical artistry on this release, via the various barbed insults and plain-old sadness in Thompson's writing, especially in something as achingly moving as "I've learned how long the night is when you're gone" or as Cave-level macabre as "Then he took off her clothes and threw them in a pile/ He watched her stand there cold and shivering for a while/ Then he picked up her stocking lying on the floor/ And wrapped it round her neck until she breathed no more."
The album loses some of its steam after that murder song, but overall it's every bit as worthwhile as Thompson's previous live albums. A handful of tracks here would also fit in well on any serious Best of Thompson compilation. If not quite a masterpiece, Dream Attic offers enough of Thompson's alternately acerbic observations and droll humor and a crack band in peak form to make it required listening for both long-time Thompson fans, newbies and, yes, even the suit-and-tie crowd that get by on a steady diet of CNN.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)