Small Town Romance

Richard Thompson: Small Town Romance [1984]

This album is subtitled "Live/Solo in New York, 1982," with recordings being made both before and after the "Shoot Out the Lights" tour with Linda. At its root is a revelation of just precisely who Richard Thompson is. Although recorded before Hand of Kindness, its appearance a year later signaled to anyone who was paying close enough attention the essence of Thompson as a true minstrel, in the real, centuries-old sense of the term. If Hand of Kindness established Thompson’s persona as a rock solo artist on his own terms, Small Town Romance caught the very essence of the artist behind the "rock star."

I suppose that this is just an unnecessarily elaborate way of saying that Richard Thompson is (among other things) a folksinger/songwriter, but that doesn’t quite get the whole picture across. Thompson’s only real prototype here is Dylan, who of course began his career as a folk balladeer and acoustic performer. Thompson, on the other hand, started as an electric guitar wizard in a late-’60s underground rock band - but the approaches of both performers parallel one another in the sense that one aspect of the personal serves both as an underpinning and a counterpoint to the other.

Most of the songs on Small Town Romance are Thompson originals, and one of the shocks of listening to the album is the realization of just how broad and deep his catalog of songs was, even at this date. The selections span the years from Fairport Convention Days through the eight years of his partnership with Linda, as well as several new (or at least newly performed) songs. Confronted with such an enormous wealth of extraordinary material (especially remembering what is not included - there are no songs from Shoot Out the Lights or Hand of Kindness), there is the concomitant shock of realization of just what a wealth of material this artist has created.
(A similar experience can be had from listening to Neil Young’s 1975 collection, Decade, where similarly, part of the joy of listening is the sense of awe at the realization of just how much this individual has accomplished in what might seem the relatively short span of a career.)

But there is more to the experience of Small Town Romance than this. For here, the songs are taken from their original context and played as simple, direct objects in themselves - stripped down, bare and revelatory.

In a sense, to call these songs "stripped down," however, is a bit misleading in itself. Although accompanied only by Thompson’s acoustic guitar, his complex, but unobtrusive arrangements and seeming effortless, endless virtuosity makes just about any other comparably configured performer absolutely pale by comparison. What Shoot Out the Lights and Hand of Kindness did to formally stamp Thompson as an electric guitar "hero," Small Town Romance does for the acoustic. In brief, it is almost too obvious to state that Richard Thompson is, quite simply, one of the greatest (and most complete) guitarists in pop/rock music history - or in any genre, for that matter.

The amazing thing, however, is that even amidst so much complex, contrapuntal and freewheeling plectral and finger-picking wizardry, one’s attention is always driven directly to heart of the song itself. This is where Richard Thompson shows that he understands precisely what he is doing, and in what a great, long tradition he is participating in and perpetuating.
Thompson continues performing alone, in this format, to this day, alternating solo tours with electric ones, and it becomes quite apparent that the latter, the so-called "rock" bands (as well as his albums) are merely extensions of the former, folk model. The rock band (or rock album) is, in essence, merely a modern form of something quite old and universal. This should come as no great revelation, as anyone familiar with Bob Dylan (or Neil Young) should know, but it is in Richard Thompson’s unique sensibility to and consciousness of, this tradition that makes him stand apart.

The root of all of Thompson’s music is basically folk music - specifically, British folk music. This was the great breakthrough discovery of the band of his youth, Fairport Convention. The fact that Thompson can acknowledge and absorb this enormous wealth of tradition, without becoming mired in conservatism - indeed, to use the past as a starting point for exploration of the modern experience in all its terms and forms, is the basic description of the project to which Richard Thompson has devoted his life.

In working in the mould first defined by Dylan, Thompson has few peers. And since his British starting point is so distinct from the American textures of Dylan (as well as the Canadian Neil Young), his music sounds like no one else’s. It is simultaneously personal and idiosyncratic, while at the same time, culturally timeless, almost eternal.

To hear Thompson playing and singing by himself is, once again, a true revelation. If this were all he did, he would still be one of the greatest artists living. What is truly amazing is that we did not hear Thompson performing in this manner until a good fifteen years into his career. This is, indeed, the true, raw essence of what he does.

"Time To Ring Some Changes" - This is a fabulous way to begin the album. For whether it refers, however obliquely - this is in the ear of the listener, of course - to his breakup with Linda or not, it is certainly fitting as a declaration of independence for an artist as possible. Whenever, or in whatever context the song was written, it is most apropos for an artist who is (quite literally, in this case) beginning a solo career.

The lyrics are a litany of dissatisfactions, followed by a chorus of affirmations (simply the repeated refrain of the title) to take control of one’s life and set things in their proper new direction:

This old house is a-tumbling down,
The walls are gone, but the roof is sound.
The landlord’s deaf, he can’t be found,
Time to ring some changes.

Of course, the lyrics can be read spiritually as well, in the sense of the songs on Pour Down Like Silver. The concluding lyric, "And everything you do leaves you empty inside," certainly conjures up the model of the dissatisfied pre-convert reaching his epiphany. But that is something that a great folk song can do - to leave open such possibilities without nailing them down as absolutes. As personal and specific as the complaints of the song are, they are broad enough to reach a kind of universalism that can communicate very directly with just about any sympathetic audience of any given time.

Thompson’s deep, rustic voice with his Northern (almost Scottish) inflections make it a perfect vehicle for this kind of communication. This instrument, which we have heard grow over the years into a powerful and authoritative voice (much like Dylan or perhaps a better comparison, Johnny Cash) cuts deeply into a listener’s consciousness with that unique penetration that only the greatest and most idiosyncratic of singers can possess. Thompson’s singing voice, oddly enough, moreover, like Hank Williams, Van Morrison or Neil Young, embodies that peculiar power of emotional expression for which the only proper English word we possess is "soul." This term, which of course is generally developed from and directed towards African-American artists, proves itself yet again to embody something more profoundly human than any ethnic designation can adequately encompass.

And while no listener is going to confuse Richard Thompson (or Hank Williams, for that matter) with James Brown, Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye or Aretha Franklin, it is the recognition that this quality is peculiar to a depth of meaning in the human voice, and not simply the affectations of a particular "style" or ethnic origin.

For like Dylan, Richard Thompson’s voice, while initially off-putting to many, has the ability to grab the attention of the smaller group of more sensitive listeners, and simply nail them the floor with its understated power and commanding ownership of its words and pitches.

Right from the beginning, the guitar is simply astonishing, as well. The absolute mastery and precision of the finger-picking technique, with its amazing melody contained in the context of continuing rhythmic devices make it seem virtually a small army of tightly arranged guitars seems to defy human possibility, yet it is incredibly absent of self consciousness or flash - it simply is what it is.

Thompson’s guitar figures, like his songs themselves, are usually rooted in traditional British music and carry the dancing flourishes of popular jigs, reels, marches and minuets that have hummed about the British Isles for hundreds of years. It would take an entire book in itself - and penned by a much more competent guitarist/musician than myself - to begin to detail the remarkable constructions of his arrangements and solos, so I will touch on them but briefly in my discussions of the songs. (Be aware that there is always an "Oh, my God!"" statement implicitly present whenever Thompson plays anything.)

"Time to Ring Some Changes’" uniting musical device is a bouncing, pipe-like figure within the contexts of the chords of its march-like structure. The effect is ultimately that of man stamping victoriously down the road, ready to take his own future in hand with a sense of joyful determination.

This is a wonderful, uplifting way to begin this very personal album, and the small but enthusiastic crowd at New York’s Bottom Line nightclub respond with appropriate astonishment and appreciation.

Video - Richard Thompson performs "Time to Ring Some Changes"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=BXDdpduNJU8

"Beat the Retreat" - Of course, we have encountered this song in unadorned acoustic form before - actually, the original is already pretty stark - and Thompson again seems to effortlessly achieve the impossible task of drawing one’s attention and emotion in to an almost-static world of minimality in this, his most unaffected spiritual plea. Actually, he adds a few guitar flourishes here and there, as well as a guitar solo, which suggests a newfound sense of freedom and confidence.

One simply cannot help but reflecting on the ironies of Thompson descanting upon loyalty after sundering the tie with his wife, and in this close context, the song’s message is not diluted, but rather deepened with a sense of bare, naked honesty. The effect is one of sadness and regret, but also acceptance of the inevitability of the facts of life.

Thompson changes the lyric in one very important place. Rather than singing, "There was no sense in my leaving," he replaces the line with "There was no joy in my leaving." And indeed one senses a true lack of joy - perhaps even despair - in this older, wiser man’s recognition that perhaps some thing do make sense, even if they go against the height of our ideals.

Here, Thompson beats the retreat, not back to Linda - indeed, not only just back to his God - but, in essence, back to himself, his truest self. And no, that is not always a joyous trip, but it is often necessary. Heard here, in this context, it is not only moving, but very revelatory and painfully cathartic.

"Woman or a Man" - This is a silly little country-type ditty concerning sexual indeterminacy. Thompson’s less-grandiose version of "Lola" finds the object of his affection so compelling that he invites her home, regardless of gender. He/she beats and robs him, and after running away, the singer is still infatuated. It’s a cute little novelty number, I suppose, with some very nice guitar picking.

"A Heart Needs a Home" - Thompson warily takes full possession of one of his greatest songs. Like all the vocals that we normally associate with Linda, we miss her beautifully plaintive, interpretive voice, and with Richard’s as replacement we cannot avoid that lingering sense of irony and loss. That said, however, Thompson’s solo rendition is convincingly poignant and heartbreakingly honest. His heart may still need a home, but he now knows that home is somewhere else, and the tentative, aching nature of the singing suggests that he quite possibly might not know where that home is. It is a beautiful, more open interpretation, and not a little scary.

"For Shame of Doing Wrong" - I have always heard this Linda song as a kind of sequel to "A Heart Needs a Home," probably because of the prominent use of the term "fool." In the first song, the singer is "never going to be a fool," by remaining faithful to his/her lover. In the second, the singer has lapsed and laments, "I wish I was a fool for you again."

Thompson appears brave for taking on these songs, and they are particularly strong, placed back to back here. Whatever guilt Thompson assigns himself, he’s not going to back away from it. These are hard songs to hear, and they must have been hard to play, particularly in public, back in 1982, with all the wounds fresh and his credibility on the line.

Thompson keeps his focus and hues close to the song’s center, letting the audience judge and draw their own conclusions. It sounds like a painful right of passage, but it’s much to his credit that he did not hang these songs away, and his emotional commitment to their essence shows.
If we remember that these songs were originally written about God, perhaps we can understand more clearly how dearly Thompson needs to sing them in order to keep faith. If he sings them, as it seems, with a sense of self accusation, it must have a cathartic effect. At least it seems to come off that way.

This is pretty heady meat, and topped with a lovely, devotional guitar solo to boot.

"Genesis Hall" - If anyone had, or could forgotten the lush, sad beauty of this Fairport Convention masterpiece, they will be eloquently reminded of it here. It is rather staggering to recall that Thompson wrote this song at 21 - if he had composed it at the time of this recording, or even today, it would be considered a crowning jewel of his maturity. This was an old man inside a young man, indeed. And here an older and sadly wiser man takes it up and pours his soul into it. This is worth the price of the album all by itself.

Video - Richard Thompson performs "Genesis Hall"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wa569wY1HzE

"Honky Tonk Blues" - Side one ends with this Hank Williams classic, to which Thompson remains faithful, both in style and spirit, whilst adding a masterful, dizzying, ragtime-like arrangement on 12-string guitar that is technically dazzling, while not detracting from the simplicity of the song’s text. Richard can’t sing like old Hank, but he doesn’t try, letting his own voice, complete with accent, ride the rails of Williams melody.

It’s lovely to hear Thompson’s American country influences come to the fore, and his tremendous grasp and control of this music is very informative as to just how deep his roots run and provides all the more evidence of why he is so strong a writer/performer. This is a very exciting ride indeed.

Video - Richard Thompson Performs "Honky Tonk Blues"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Hep7FNNWyqo

"Small Town Romance" - Side two begins with the title song for the album, a morose ballad about the difficulty of being in love in a small community where everyone knows one another. I do not know the date of the song’s composition, but I suspect that it was a recent addition to Thompson’s repertoire, given the prominence of the title.

The small-town populace has too much intimate knowledge of an individual to give love its natural scope of expression:

They knew you when you were weaning.
They knew you when you were grown.
They think they know all about you.
They never will leave you alone.

Jealousies from your elder’s love frustrations will intrude upon you, trying to force you apart. The only conclusion for the lovers is to "get away."

Oh, small town romance,
They’d still break you if they could.
They’d always say "I told you so,
She never was no good."

"See, she never loved him anyway.
See, she never loved him anyway.
See, she never loved him anyway."
Oh, you can’t have love in a small town.

The temptation is there to interpret the song biographically, with Thompson’s private life in scrutiny before the public. Then it strikes one that quite possibly that is precisely what he is singing about. If you are a public figure, then the the whole world is a "small town." And it is people like you who are looking into his personal business in order to read his artwork.

This realization makes the critical interpreter wish to step back and allow his subject some room. But still, as the song makes an eloquent defense, the fact remains that the artist must live in public and must accept the public consequences of his personal decisions. It is a great irony that a song like "Small Town Romance" invites such personal scrutiny, but there you have it.
If you are an artist of integrity, such as Richard Thompson, a large part of the bond with your audience is based on trust. You have to accept this side of the equation. But on the other side, it reminds us all of even the artist’s right to privacy, and that our privilege to dig deeply into his works has its limitations, if only in common decency.

In short, just chalk up another great song for RT.

"I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight" - Well, here is one "Linda" song that Thompson throws himself into with great gusto and sheer abandon. He truly possesses this song as truly and powerfully as she ever did, and his singing is strongly confident, filled with little slides and punctuations. A brilliantly busy guitar arrangement more than adequately takes the place of a rock band. Another great song is here truly sustained, while at the same time transformed. Briefly, it is breathtaking.

Video - Richard Thompson performs "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=uUIpCqxRh_M

"Down Where the Drunkards Roll" - "Bright Light"’s dour sequel gets its solo airing here, and it actually functions better in this context. Richard’s voice is more gloomily appropriate for this number, and the sparseness of the single guitar sustains the mood better than the original. Thompson adds sparklingly inventive and delicate runs throughout, in between each verse to lend a lyrical poignancy to this sick, sad observation. Yes, it’s another classic.

"Love Is Bad for Business" - Here’s another new(?) song that sits easily with "Small Town Romance." (I can easily imagine them as two sides of a single that never sold a copy.) More sprightly and uplifting in tone - and in a major key - "Love" is a delightful little confection that ironically condemns love as impractical. It starts with a boss’s complaint to a female worker:

What time of day is this? Oh, you really look a mess!
Clean down the tables and help out on the door.
It’s just no good to me if you’re in ecstasy,
Running all night with that boyfriend of yours.

Love is bad for business . . .
Empties the tills, and it don’t pay the bills,
It’ll do you no good.

The song sounds simply like the complaint of a curmudgeon until one begins to reflect on the real incompatibility of "love" - or any sort of transcendent, spiritual pursuit, with the banal demands of everyday economic life.

For, unfortunately, everything the song asserts is absolutely true. Humans are divided creatures, requiring even the most sensitive among us to spend a major portion of our waking lives attending to simple maintenance. In the context of what we know to be Thompson’s spiritual and aesthetic predispositions, the insertion of the drab fact of necessity into what is essentially the great self-emergence of human potential is always getting drowned in the necessities of drudgery.

It’s not a fun fact, and when Thompson’s character demands, "You better wipe that Mona Lisa smile right off your face," we can hear it resonate in all of the demands that wrap around us every day.

A perfect rejoinder would be Ray Davies’ sublime couplet:

"All life we work, but work is a bore.
If life’s for living, what’s living for?

"The Great Valerio" - Here, Thompson reminds us of just how great a songwriter he is, performing one of his most brilliant, intense compositions. Once again, he must displace Linda, and of course the dismissal of her hauntingly powerful voice makes that impossible. "The Great Valerio" is one of her singular triumphs, and one of the greatest vocal performances on record.
Thompson takes on the song with less majesty and delivers less awe, but his sad, dark retelling lends a different kind of spookiness to it. He sounds humbled at his own words, and the extraordinary power of the melody and imagery shine through.

The uniqueness of this performance lies in Thompson’s apparent suffering as a victim of his own premonitions. Here again, we cannot help but inserting the poignancy of biographical detail to his pitiful vision:

We falter at the sight,
We stumble in the mire.
Fools who think they see the light,
Prepare to balance on the wire.
But we learn to watch together
And feed on what we see above,
‘Til our hearts turn like the seasons,
And we are acrobats of love.

The song, indeed, is now fully self descriptive, as life has validated the instincts of the artist.
Thompson’s solo guitar arrangement is virtually identical to the original, with a few flourishes aside, and its stark appearance here reminds us just how perfectly constructed both playing and song actually are. Of exceptional note is the haunting, pulsating coda, in which he plays that dangling, insecure melody between the cautious but relentless, time-ticking finger of his thumb and third finger.

This is absolute mastery at work. Find me something comparable - I’ll say you can’t.

"Don’t Let a Thief Steal Into Your Heart" - This song originally appeared on First Light, and I have not heard it, and can therefore make no comparisons. The song itself seems to me to be straddled unevenly between the two worlds of Pour Down Like Silver and Shoot Out the Lights - while the former pledges loyalty, while asking forgiveness "for the restless thief I’ve been," the latter is coming unglued. This is somewhere in the middle, perhaps a rumbling premonition of the great failures to come. Consequently, it it carries less strength than both ends of its extremes.

Who is Thompson addressing here?

Don’t let a thief steal into your heart,
Or you might wind up broken hearted.
Don’t let a whisper tear you apart,
Or you’ll be right back where you started.

Though sung in second person, it is obviously a warning to himself. The repeated, three-chord minor structure seems designed to beat the idea into his own head. (Though it must be admitted that the elegant and crisp guitar arrangement makes it one of the best on the album.)

Thompson’s great commitment is to God, of course, but this commitment spills over into all aspects of life. Commitment is a difficult and very tenuous affair, as Thompson well knows. He sings with the full knowledge of both the devout devotee and the fallen apostate, and he manages to convey the still-present fear that dwells in even the most securely convicted.
The last verse is one of Thompson’s most hauntingly poignant, relevant for himself, as well as everyone listening:

Everyone is in love with money,
Strange news, ‘cause they say love is blind.
How many times did you meet somebody
Who said they had some real peace of mind?

It’s a very good question. Ideals are much more elusive than we tend to credit them. Do your own mental reckoning, and it’s easy to understand the universality of Thompson’s vision - and it’s just as easy to see why not that many people would want to hear it.

"Never Again" - This is perhaps Thompson’s saddest, most despairing song - which is saying quite a lot, indeed. Here is one instance where Thompson’s appropriation of Linda’s vocal works to the song’s benefit, as the weariness of Richard’s voice seems to wear the song better. His hushed, fatal delivery of the lines are simply bone chilling:

Old man, how you tarry, old man how you weep.
The trinkets you carry and the garlands you keep.
For the salt tears of lovers and the whispers of friends
Come never, oh never, oh never again.

There is no respite from despair or hope of delivery here. In the album’s original configuration, this was the final song on the record, and its finality feels a little too much, even for a Richard Thompson album.

BONUS CUTS
Thank god for compact discs. The tree additional tracks added to the original 14-song set serve not only as a magnificent encore to a wonderful concert - (the album is actually two shows, collected and combined) - but some of the most wonderful material on the album.

"How Many Times Do You Have to Fall?" - This song features some of the finest finger picking on the album from Thompson, in an open-tuned D. Its folk-like character functions well in turning the mood back to something approaching optimism:

You broke my heart so many times
I can’t count the pieces.
Every time you push me down,
It seems my strength increases.
How many times do you have to cry
While people stand there gawking?
How many times do you have to fall
Before you end up walking?

I don’t know when Thompson wrote this tune, and it appears nowhere else (save on a collection of rarities), but the schematic, though frustrating, is hopeful. The subject is ostensibly a continuingly failing relationship, but of course its meaning can be stretched to any human endeavor.

Thompson stays resolute through to the end:

Oh, won’t you give me one more chance,
I couldn’t do no worse.
Empty out my heart for you
Before it has to burst.
I’m too hungry not to win,
But you’re the game I’m stalking.
How many times do you have to fall
Before you end up walking?

The answer here is not "blowing in the wind," but rather within ourselves. This may not be one of Thompson’s most profound songs, but it does display a resoluteness that is quite welcome after the nihilistic depths of "Never Again," and enjoins us all to keep on trying despite the odds.

"Roll Over Vaughn Williams (instrumental)" - Possibly the most virtuostic display on the album, this is a completely instrumental solo exploration of the guitar line from the magnificent opening song on Henry the Human Fly. Of course, without the lyrics - basically without the song - it necessarily lacks the savage intent an purpose of that jaw dropper, Thompson makes some new jaws drop here with the sustained pulsations of his unique bagpipe-like picking style. Who could have known such a kind of playing of the instrument was even possible? This is absolutely a delicious feast for those who savor Thompson’s idiosyncratic Celtic playing. Amazing.

"Meet on the Ledge" - What a revelation to hear a mature (34-year-old) Richard Thompson singing his first truly great song from his early twenties! Time and circumstance have only deepened the resonances of this Fairport Convention classic. After all the roads this man has travelled, it is extraordinary to listen to these ghostly words and heartbreaking melody and to view them, like so many Thompson songs, as premonitions. I suppose that it is his finely-honed sensitivity to the universally tragic character of life that makes songs such as this so seemingly clairvoyant.

This song was written before the van crash, before the marriage and breakup with Linda. But in truth it could have been written before anything actually imaginable. This is what James Joyce called "The grave and constant in human suffering, and its secret cause." Whether its transcendent vision of ultimate reconciliation is a kind of wishful thinking, or rather, it is the statement of an acceptance of fact, whatever hard truth that might entail, it is a brave, unblinking declaration of assent to reality.

The song is a kind of blessing, both to the singer and his audience, and it completely redeems the harshness of the original ending of "Never Again." With "Meet on the Ledge," we are reminded again of the acute sensitivity that drives the restless subconscious of this most honest and restless of songwriters. It is a great gift, both to him, and to us, that "finding better words," as well as better music can be a pathway to both the healing and acceptance of life.

This is where the album should close, and here it does. Thompson’s earlier joke about the "waiting helicopter" comes to remind us here of the sad and lonely troubadour stomping slowly back to the waiting car or bus, guitar case in hand, and makes us grateful for all such singers, from Hank Williams on down, who can show us the better and the worse parts of ourselves through their own personal ordeals.


In short, Small Town Romance is part and parcel of Richard Thompson’s re-invention, his re-emergence as an artist completely on his own. Not many people (Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Willie Nelson), can command an audience over an hour’s time with simply a guitar in hand, let alone be profound. If Small Town Romance is a lonely sound, it is also a healing sound, part of a great transition to the reclamation of self.

When these sets were recorded, in 1982, Thompson had not yet recorded Hand of Kindness, and his personal artistic career was rather up in the air. There is a something quite poignant about an artist, especially one who continually dwells on the margin of popular success, just stepping out and being himself, with no trappings whatsoever. The results of these shows, and subsequently, this album, is part of the great personal process of transition to what Thompson would become, essentially, to this day.

The fact that the vast majority of these songs were originally recorded in a group context between the years of 1968 and 1978 demonstrates the already deep roots of a tremendous body of work by the time Thompson took over his own personal career, and would create so many great songs over the next twenty-five years is testament to his endlessly restless creative character.

By the time this album was released, in 1984, Thompson had more or less established himself as a viable solo act, and indeed had developed into a very powerful icon in what admittedly is a small, but extraordinarily devoted critical and cultural following. His ultimate mastery of his craft, his seemingly endless creative resources, and what would prove an almost unmatched level of quality over the next couple of decades would help fuel his mythic status as "the greatest artist you’ve never heard."

Not many people bought Small Town Romance on its release, but those who did - and still do - are hard-core committed fans, people committed to something they sense is larger in themselves, as personified by Thompson. The fact that the album was allowed to go out of print for so long - with Thompson’s assent, no less - only to have it finally returned to the catalog by fan demand is a testament to the power of such direct artistry and at least a margin of the culture’s desire and love for simple, powerful and honest exchanges that no mass-manufactured pop icon can deliver. Like very few artists can, Richard Thompson delivers the real artifact, straight from his gut and his unbelievably magic fingers.

Hand of Kindness

Richard Thompson: Hand of Kindness [June 1983]

I am not certain whether to say that this is a new Richard Thompson, but it is definitely the beginning of a completely new stage in his career and life. Certainly, Hand of Kindness, his first solo album after breaking up with wife and partner Linda, is a kind of re-birth of sorts. There is, on this stunningly fresh, mostly exuberant album, an emergence of joy, energy and independence that firmly announces a new kind of presence, if not a new presence itself.

This is not to say that Richard Thompson has here fundamentally changed - there is still the irony and the bewilderment of his greatest work, but here they are mostly worked for comic and lightly cathartic effect. That is not to say that there is no darkness here - it wouldn’t be a Richard Thompson album without it, and one feels the "ghost" of Linda and the shadows of guilt emerging throughout all the buoyant mood of the record.

There is remarkable energy here, however, and much of that is indeed the energy of freedom - a self-release that a man in his early thirties can feel when he’s suddenly cut loose and do exactly what he wants to do. And from that source, there emerges so much of Hand of Kindness’ power and freshness, even at the loss of the indescribable depths of Shoot Out the Lights. In a sense, this is an album by a much younger man.

Another thing that makes this album distinct is the sense of a band. The group assembled here are mostly familiar faces from Richard & Linda’s previous albums and tours, and of course, Fairport Convention - Simon Nicol, Dave Pegg, Dave Mattocks, Pete Zorn (on saxophone this time), and John Kirkpatrick. This group, along with Pete Thomas on baritone sax, makes a lively and exciting presence, a full-blown show band that have developed a sound specifically for this album. The "live" sound and ambience on Hand of Kindness enhances is ready-to-like appeal.
Thompson would tour with this group to support the album. Their sound, both on the record and on the road, were a revelation to those that managed to hear them. The blend of instruments, some of which seemed at the time archaically antithetical to rock (accordion, saxes), especially in the wake of dying embers of punk and new wave, combined with such rock-ready enthusiasm and intensity (not to mention virtuosity), helped establish a new mode of presentation that deftly leaped past conventional assumptions and presented an extraordinary forward vision that could be described as the essence of "postmodernism."

Though never a big seller, Thompson, with this hip/straight rocking ensemble neatly skirted the ever-self-conscious "cool" definition, and would provide inspiration, love and loyalty to a whole generation of "alternative rockers," as diverse as Los Lobos, Brave Combo and They Might Be Giants.

At the center of all this fresh energy was Thompson, full throated, with that odd Scots accent, and ever and ever more electric guitar. Thompson, one of the most gifted guitarists rock has yet produced, had always provided showcases for his virtuosity within certain songs ("Night Comes In," "Shoot Out the Lights," etc.), but always to the furthering of the text of the composition. On Hand of Kindness, he finally, unashamedly, steps into the spotlight and just lets her rip. The result is sheer joy, ecstasy and release.

Everything great about this approach, and the resultant excitement are all completely manifested in the opening song of the album . . .

"Tear Stained Letter" - This classic barn burner simply blows doors. The energy and irony of this kickoff celebration to musical/emotional independence is one of the strongest songs in the Thompson canon, and it still sets of fireworks in concert to this day.

The song is constructed by a series of riffs that sound like a crazy sailor’s hornpipe played by the saxes, accordion and guitar, with a breathless energy and roller-coaster sense of endless development. The rhythm is hard, driving and relentless, and the resultant impression is a kind of crazy-quilt explosion that effortlessly fuses British folk rock, zydeco, rockabilly and punk with a zany majesty.

Richard’s vocal enters, and his voice is full, rich and confident, yet fed with an affected kind of delirium that mocks itself (and its past) in its feigned desperation:

It was three in the morning when she took me apart,
She wrecked my furniture, she wrecked my heart.
She danced on my head like Arthur Murray,
The scars ain’t never going to mend in a hurry.
Just when I thought I could learn to forget her,
Right through the door came a tear-stained letter.

Cry, cry, if it makes you feel better,
Set it all down in a tear-stained letter . . .

Here, Richard Thompson has pulled off a major coup - coming off the much-publicized breakup with Linda and the painful insights of Shoot Out the Lights, he manages with his first shot out the gate both to confront and mock any and all expectations. The thrill of self-release and abandonment is absolutely thrilling.

After a repeat of the musical theme, the zany lyrics continue:

Well, my head was beating like a song by the Clash,
It was writing checques that my body couldn’t cash,
Got to my feet, I was reeling and dizzy,
I went for the phone but the line was busy.
Just when I thought that things would get better,
Right through the door come a tear-stained letter . . .

Of course, the knowledgeable listener thinks immediately of Linda. What would Richard Thompson produce on his first effort after the breakup? Would we find his sense of regret, of sadness, his confessions of guilt?

Well, I don’t think anybody expected this. The good-natured sense of sentimental mockery of "Tear Stained Letter" is absolutely the furthest thing from any morbid sense of contriteness that one could imagine.

Is the song biographical? Of course not. Even if Linda had written some kind of yearning plea after their divorce (extremely unlikely), Richard certainly wouldn’t have flaunted it in public. But it is personal, in a sense, This is Richard Thompson at his wickedest, and in some ways his most brilliant. With brilliant irony, he both answers and derides his audience and critics’ expectations of him to reveal his true self, to put his emotional laundry out on the line.
Tear Stained Letter is the parody of a soap opera, a manic, furious attack on his personal/artistic situation, a punk-fueled middle finger at sententiousness, and a joyous declaration of independence.

Richard’s first guitar solo takes up an entire verse and chorus with lightning runs, mocking jiggles and phony bended-note cries in a display of virtuosity that is both ecstatic and nasty. For the first time since the late Fairport Convention days, the shy, non-showy Thompson rips out a solo that would leave Clapton fans dropping in the dirt.

For all the seriousness and sensitivity that he has shown in his lyrics for so long, it is a liberating thrill to hear Thompson tear back into his ridiculous tail of personal mayhem:

Well, I like coffee and I like tea,
But I just don’t like this fiddle-di-dee.
It makes me nervous, gives me the hives,
Waiting for a kiss from a bunch of fives.
Just when I thought I could learn to forget her,
Right through the door came a tear-stained letter . . .

The ridiculousness of it all is simply sublime. And the fact that Thompson sounds like he means every ridiculous word of his diatribe makes it that much more hilariously liberating.
The musicians begin swapping solos, beginning with one sax, followed by a brilliantly dramatic accordion by Kirkpatrick, another sax that threatens to take the roof down, and finally comes back to Thompson, zapping through his seemingly infinite possibilities of speed runs and crazy clusters until he drives the song defiantly home.

What a way to kick off a solo career!

Video - Richard Thompson: "Tear Stained Letter"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=8hEWFsXrXv4

"How I Wanted to To" - If the album kicks off with a frantic parody of Thompson’s personal life, its second offering, "How I Wanted To," resonates with deep, heartfelt emotion. No matter what Thompson might say, indeed no matter what his intentions, this song, this performance, are unmistakably addressed to Linda, right from his very soul. Personally, I believe that he must have meant it to be so, quite explicitly, but even in the event that he did not, it comes across that way with such direct, confessional force that whatever universal meaning might have been intended becomes immortalized - through perception and context - as severely personal. Ironically, in this instance, the personal nature of the song gives it greater power, and thus universalizes it further than it could have been otherwise.

A slow, deep mournful ballad, tuned to a low D on electric guitar, Thompson begins his soliloquy in a dark, resonant wail:

When we parted just like friends
We never tied loose ends.
I could never say the words that would make amends.

This seems so brutally forthright and honest that the confession is not only convincing, but absolutely disarming. Admitting his inability to voice expression to his failures, he turns in his art to reach for the words he could never summon in a plain voice.

Ultimately, his desire for communication, even here, is limited. The repeated words of the chorus are brief, simple and inadequate, but they are given force by the gorgeous melody and the intensity of the singing:

Oh, how I wanted to,
Oh, how I wanted to,
To say I love you,
To say I love you,
Oh, how I wanted to.

In a sense, this economy of limitation in verbal expression reveals more than mere words could. In this case, less is more, as what else could be added to make the inexpressible more coherent?
As the slow, martial drum joins the procession of the song, Thompson continues singing, his voice saying more than his words, and his words limited at that. Pain, regret, guilt, sympathy, and the recognition of the enormous emotional tie between himself and his ex-partner keep him nearly tongue-tied, and it is is the confession of this that makes the song profound:

Now hearts do what hearts will,
And my nights are sleepless still.
Well, I never was the one to speak my fill.

His admission makes his effort more beautifully effective, and genuinely moving in its stark humility.

Finally, towards the end of the song, the words simply give out, and Thompson, in pure emotional abandon, gives up on words completely. Instead, he plays his guitar, and sings along to the notes he plays, such notes that convey that expression that goes far beyond words. The moment is unexpected, astounding in its emotional impact. It is an inspiration that comes not just from art, but from deep within the recesses of the self, that self that knows the bottomlessness of meaning, as well as the confusion of commitment to self and to other - and the self that realizes the futility of either explaining or excusing either.

In short, it is one of the most beautiful, transcendent moments ever to occur in music, and the years have not diminished its power to shock, hurt and heal.

The song builds to a climax and reaches its conclusion with increased dynamics that have been earned. This is pure honesty, and there is nothing remotely contrived about "How I Wanted To."

He needed to say this - that is, to play and sing it. He has now done it, and it is time to move on.

"Both Ends Burning" - What the album does move onto, is perhaps the silliest song Thompson has ever done. "Both Ends Burning" is a galumphing tribute to an impossibly decrepit nag that somehow miraculously crosses the finish line a winner. There is an affable goofiness to this stomp, and the band is in fine form, but one still feels like this might have been better left on the discard reel.

Of course, you can search for an allegory in the story - perhaps something like tenacity in the face of impossible odds, or (more likely) the irony of the last coming in first, but any interpretation here seems like a bit of a stretch.

The repeated chorus of the song:

Both Ends Burning, Both Ends Burning,
That’s how she got her name,
Both Ends Burning, Both Ends Burning,
I never will sleep again.

might suggest diligence, but the choruses don’t really seem to support this contention. At any rate, if one can bear it, the song definitely takes the listener far afield of the depths of "How I Wanted To," and the sax and guitar solos are certainly there to be enjoyed. In short, it’s fun if you want it to be. If there is any more depth here, I would be delighted if someone would point it out to me.

"A Poisoned Heart & A Twisted Memory" - An uncertain, twanging guitar chord hangs, repeating in the air, and then suddenly - bang! - the band joins in for a shaky sledgehammer parody of a blues-rock song with Thompson screeching at the edge of hysteria:

Oh, you took my word and you took my key,
You took my pride and you took my dignity.
How can I still pretend
To be what a man should be?

If we are back in the realm of Linda, we have returned via the way of parody, the way we began, with "Tear Stained Letter." However, instead of the manic fury of that lunatic masterpiece, here we are, stumbling along, punch drunk.

The song drips sarcasm, but the humor is so rich and self-pointed that we cannot help but be swept along by the damned thing. Thompson is too much aware of the predicament in which he’s placed himself, so he admits it, singing about it with only half-feigned amazement:

Well, whatever I say is in a book,
Whatever I do there’s someone there to look.
You just can’t shake a man
The way that I’ve been shook.

So what do you do when you’re a public artist whose personal life has become inextricably enmeshed with his public’s perception and expectation? Apparently, you sing about it:

Is this the way it’s supposed to be?
Is this the way it’s supposed to be?
A poisoned heart and a twisted memory?

The effect of Thompson parodying himself as the public victim is energizingly shocking, funny, and liberating. Someone as oddly intelligent as Richard Thompson is not going to be shoved into the confessional singer/songwriter mold, and if he’s going there, he’s going on his own sarcastic terms.

Everything about this song is bigger, more ridiculously impactful than life. Thompson mocks the role he is supposed to play by exaggerating it and playing it to the hilt. His vocals sound like a madman losing his grip, barely in control, and the lyrics are outrageously inflated:

Oh, see that lifer doing his time,
If I could have his place and he’d have mine,
We’d be no better off
On either side of the line.

For me, the height of the ridiculousness that always brings me to laughter is Thompson’s mock-anguished cry, "You treat me like a creep." Both the use of this hilarious word and Thompson’s pained pronunciation (as if it were the ultimate denunciation) are deliriously rich.

This brilliant band is so adept at playing this shook-up version on a rock ‘n’ roll nervous breakdown, that it seems to totter and sway like a tower that could crash down any moment. Near the end, with a holler like he’s falling off a bridge, Thompson rips into a screaming, manic guitar solo, full of anxious jetties and screaming wails that make you think his head is about to explode. This neurotic parody of the blues is so ripe in its pitch, so dead-on in its delivery, it simply blows any sententiousness aside.

Still, Thompson seems to have his cake and eat it too. As ridiculous as he makes this madcap farce, the intensity is such that you cannot help but feel that everything he says and plays comes straight from his gut. That authentic human emotions creep through this seething, sarcastic mush is the true testament to Richard Thompson’s true artistic power - perhaps, his genius. The sheer intelligence of an individual aware of being locked into such a ridiculous situation, despite his seemingly conscious abilities is palpable. That Thompson can put this to words, play it, scream it and enact it with such self-effacing skill is absolutely extraordinary.

Here, at the end of side one of Hand of Kindness, we are suddenly aware, not that we have a new Richard Thompson, but one that has been through his own private hell and is re-emerging with his spirit intact and his keen mind still punching at the windmills of uncontrollable chaos.

"Where the Wind Don’t Whine" - This fantasy of escape sounds madly triumphant even though it ends in failure. To the rhythm of martial drums and a bagpipe-like electric guitar, Thompson spins a tale of being taken up by a strange young woman ("She looked too fresh for twenty-one") and being driven off in her fast car to a promised land. The song demonstrates the singer’s maturity, while still accepting his susceptibility for delusional fantasy - in the end, he recognizes it as such, and what’s more, he recognizes his own limitations. Essentially, he recognizes who he is.

"Get in the car," she said, "and drive me into next week."
I should have turned her down, blame my curious streak.
I never dreamt that we’d be driving into trouble
Until we hit a rock that bent my nose double.

As this maiden promises to lead him into an ever-youthful, erotic paradise, devoid of trouble and strife ("where the wind don’t wind), the singer is ultimately not up to the trip:

I was feeling weary when the car died on me,
I pulled her over, and my strength just drained from me.
The price of running’s getting dearer and dearer,
And nothing ever seems to get nearer and nearer.

In the end, he readily acknowledges that the entire affair was an idealistic fantasy, a recognition both of limitation of self, as well as the ephemerality of evocative, sirenic visions;

I suppose I didn’t make the grade, grade, grade.
When I looked around, she’d slipped away, ‘way, ‘way.
Out in the night, you’ll see her shine, shine, shine,
Waiting where the wind don’t whine . . .

Looking out upon this futile vision like an eternal star in the night, one short trip has been enough to teach the singer the lesson that he’d probably already known.

The joyful exuberance of the song (and its attendant guitar solos) I relate to Thompson’s joy in recognition that he will not become entrapped in the cliche’-ridden world of the male in mid-life crisis.

This is a song of admission - temptation lays out there - but more a song of escape from romantic self deception. In a way, it’s a kind of inverted "Born to Run," that celebrates the trip not made, and makes staying home a more realistic model of behavior for a thirty-something divorcee.

"The Wrong Heartbeat" - This energetic rocker with its infectious ska rhythm belies its warning content. Speaking, perhaps, to his new (or any) love, he attempts to define himself brushing aside false expectations right from the start:

Don’t think my love is something you can play with,
I’m not the one to spend the time of day with.
You learn to hide love, you look it up or find it gone.
You think you need me, you think you read me,
From the beating of my heart.

But you’re listening to the wrong heartbeat . . .
My love is strong.

Here’s a head’s up to any surface lover that here’s not a man to be trifled with. It’s also a rare confession (or rather, profession) that what appears on the surface is not necessarily what one is going to find inside. "Don’t take me at face value," he seems to be saying. Here’s a person who’s not going to wear his heart on his sleeve - but that doesn’t mean that it’s not there.
The next verse continues the caution against surface detection:

If you should see a tear, you won’t see many,
If you should hear a sigh, it’s not for any.
If you should greet me as I am walking along,
You only want to see just the shell of me,
You don’t know the other part.

Why, we have to ask ourselves, does this individual have to define himself so, right up front? Why the warning, why the hiding? Is this just a confession that he is an introvert? A posting that he is a serious man, not to be trifled with? It’s all that and more.

One could take the song a step further and suggest that Thompson is seeking to define himself to his audience - and to defend himself. After the shockingly swift and very public breakup with Linda, perhaps he feels somewhat vulnerable before his public and critics. He’s not going to go so far as to apologize or anguish over a personal decision he has had to make, but he is certainly not going to be dismissed as not worth hearing because of it, either.

Hand of Kindness is a remarkable album in so many different ways, but most importantly, and perhaps most subtly, it is a declaration of independence, a statement of self. If he has "reneged" on any bargains he has kept, he has his own reasons, and we are not to assume that it is foolishness, insensitivity or shallowness on his part. The song is, at least in part, a reminder to his public that they really don’t know who he is, and that they had better withhold judgement.
A searing, self-defiant guitar solo that starts out against the grain of the chords seems to make his point all the more emphatically. This is not a man who is going to grovel and beg - he’s going to stand up straight, proud and direct, and this is part of who he is going to be from now on. If we can’t take it, perhaps we should just move along.

Our ultimate lack of capacity in understanding the true person is nailed down flat in the third verse:

Don’t throw your secrets where men will steal them.
You’ve got to hide them, you’ve got to seal them.
No matter what you try, you’ll never take my love from me.
And if you might think that you can move me
From the beating of your heart . . .

You’re listening to the wrong heartbeat . . .

In short, you’re never going to get the real Richard Thompson, at least not in the sense of a confessional singer/songwriter. That does not mean we cannot deduce certain things, but it is indeed a caveat that what we analyze is merely a projected image, constructed by art. And, yes, it is a little humbling to a critic or analyst to be reminded that their subject matter is ever elusive.

Still, like any other writer of any notable merit, Richard Thompson continues to give more away the more he tries to hide it. Ultimately, we meet him halfway, and the other side of the story is that which we always bring to it ourselves.

Video - "The Wrong Heartbeat" Video
http://youtube.com/watch?v=zVc_4pgE2_w

Video - Richard Thompson performs "The Wrong Heartbeat"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=vF5q8iU_2Aw

"The Hand of Kindness" - Smack dab in the middle of side two comes the album’s central, defining - and greatest - song. It’s no accident that this song shares the title with the record as a whole. We have parodied pity, played with ghosts, flitted with dreams and been warned not to think we’re too close to the center. But "The Hand of Kindness" is as clear a definition of just who Richard Thompson is, in the perception of his audience, and perhaps even just what he expects from us.

One thing is certain - we are never going to get that clear and definitive answer as to why Richard Thompson left his wife, why Richard and Linda Thompson are no more. And even less are we going to get some confessional or apology. This is, after all, none of our business. But for those who were, and wish to remain, fans, there is an emotional investment there on our part that demands some sort of answer.

This is as much as we are ever likely going to get - and actually, it is quite a lot.

The song is set in an ominous, minor key at a thudding mid tempo that suggests a kind of stalking. But who is stalking whom? Thompson begins by painting a portraiture of where he’s led himself to, publicly, perhaps artistically, through his actions:

Well I wove the rope, and I picked the spot
Well, I stuck out my neck, and I tightened the knot.
This is a startling, but honest recognition and affirmation that whatever situation he now finds himself, it is ultimately of his own making, his own doing. He continues, and he addresses us:

Oh, stranger, stranger, I’m near out of time,
You stretch out your hand, I stretch out mine.

If the singer is committing suicide, why does he expect us to help save him? The answer comes in the powerful chorus, which is not a defense, nor is it a statement of universal love and forgiveness. In fact, the answer to the question, aims much lower, more humbly - and thus more universally and convincingly:

Oh, maybe just the hand of kindness,
Maybe just the hand of kindness,
Maybe just a hand,
Stranger, will you reach me in time?

In the last analysis, is that all that anyone can reasonably ask for? Is it not reasonable? Is it not human? And who are we if we refuse it? Are we any better? Are we not far worse?

Thompson does not have to supply the other side of this equation. He simply states the situation, places us in it as a (perhaps unwilling) participant, and then asks for the least we can do - which in essence is to give our fellow man the benefit of the doubt.

There is something special in "The Hand of Kindness" that strikes us as palpably real human emotion, even within the context of such an honest writer as Richard Thompson. He doesn’t have to come out and say that there’s an unspoken bond between all people - he simply lets you know where he is, which of course could just as easily be us, or indeed anybody, in any situation. He simply asks for the human decency, upon self reflection, we know that we should and must deliver. At the very bottom of the matter, it is just a simple request for acceptance of human imperfection.

In this one stroke, Thompson regains the moral high ground that we fear he may have squandered by deceiving, finally, not Linda, but us, through his "betrayal."

He makes this more explicit:

Well, I scuppered the ship, and I bent the rail.
Well, I cut the brakes, and I ripped the sail.
And they called me a Jonah, it’s a sin I survived.
Well, you stretch out your hand, I’ll stretch out mine.

He does not try to justify himself - he knows he can’t. Whatever guilt lies on his shoulders, he’s going to have to carry. It’s all up to us - will we accept his plea or turn away. It’s all up to us. There’s nothing else he can do, and he knows it.

Suddenly, the pulsing of the drums and bass cease, and Thompson’s guitar is left alone to plead for itself, traveling now through shifting, unknown corners of chord changes, a glistening wanderer, uncertainly, through previously unknown territory. He negotiates his way with skill, yet still alone. Dave Mattocks’ drums return to pound against the beat, seemingly fighting him back, then finally they push heavily against the pounding return of the main riff. It is stalking, indeed - and there is no question now that it is stalking him. But there’s still no denying it’s of his own making, and he lays himself open for whatever will come as its result:

Oh, shoot that old horse, and break in the new,
Oh, hung are the many, and the living are few.
I see your intention, it’s my neck on the line,
You stretch out your hand, I stretch out mine . . .

The song pauses, hovers in space, then renews its humble request. Thompson repeats the chorus twice, then joins up again with the ominous riff, soloing against its inevitable pulsations without any sense of resolution. Here, the guitar seemingly uses every phrase it knows to entreat, but it cannot conclude - nor can the song - without some intervention from the listener.
"Hand of Kindness" gradually fades away, unresolved, forever suspended above a precipice. How can we answer? I suggest that the only way is by continuing to listen to Richard Thompson, and to trust that he will do his best to live up to his side of the bargain. And that is to be honest with us.

All his subsequent career validates our trust.

Video - Richard Thompson: "The Hand of Kindness"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=xiSDJc4SuFE

"Devonside" - Thompson finally returns to the ballad form in third person here, though it glistens with the steely sounds of electric guitars. The theme of deception is annunciated musically, as the carefully arranged introduction suddenly resolves to a completely unrelated chord before the story begins:

By Devonside she was a-marching,
It was a gang of no great size.
And surrender was the banner that she carried
And hungry was the shiver in her eyes.

Who is this mysterious lady, and where was she marching? I do not know where (or if) Devonside is, or what its significance is, if any. If "surrender" was her banner, and she was leading a small group, the obvious question is "surrender to what?" And we also ask if this is a literal scene or a figurative one. If hunger is the reason for her surrender, from what was she holding out? It seems a very strange image to me to march with a banner of "surrender." Does this image simply describe a mind set or mood in the woman, and is the "hunger" literal? There seems to be no question that "hunger," in whatever sense, is the cause of her "surrender."

She met a boy, his health was failing,
She dropped the banner and took her prize.
And the only food she had was bread and morphine,
Ah, but he fed on the shiver in her eyes.

By claiming the boy, the woman drops her banner of surrender. Then was her "surrender" a denunciation of love? If so, she has abandoned it, and no doubt it has something to do with the boy’s ill health, which may be of a spiritual nature. Still, her hunger cannot be completely appeased - for with only "bread and morphine," she is receiving only the barest sustenance, along with a kind of delusional sense of love. The boy, on the other hand, is truly nourished by her love. Strangely, it is this mysterious "shiver in her eyes" that both sustains the boy (perhaps thinking it true love), while for her it was, and perhaps remains hunger - maybe the hunger for that love that she cannot give or receive.

By Devonside his love was drifting,
He looked for comfort otherwise.
And there never was a rope or chain about him,
Ah, she held him with the shiver in her eyes.

Some time has apparently passed, and the young man has begun to mentally stray and look for love elsewhere. It is once again that "shiver" that holds him to her, that hunger that had fed him when he was ill.

I’ll dare to venture forth a picture here of a dysfunctional romance. If, on one hand, the woman "hungers" for love, in which she invests it in a relationship which is not substantive, on the other, the young man is held immobile, entrapped by the sense of power that she holds over him. The "shiver" that did feed him before is in fact, a projection that he places on her, which is now revealed (to us) as not true love, but rather as emotional, psychological need on her part. And when once he fed on this appearance when he was weak, now that he is stronger, it is what holds him to her, perhaps through guilt.

There is a key change here, back to the original, introductory mode, and the song is graced by a beautiful, mournful violin solo by guest Aly Bain.

The final verse:

"Ah," she said, "my John, I’ll be your pillow.
I’ll be your mother, lover, whore and wife."
And he knew that he had loved and never seen her,
When the light fell from the shiver in her eyes.

In her complete submission to him - and it is notable that the song now becomes personal with the introduction of a proper name - he loses all illusions about her. She is now no longer the food on which he emotionally subsists, nor is she the lover to which he felt dutifully bound. In point of fact, he does not know her at all - she is a stranger.

This beautiful, heartbreaking depiction of need in disguise of love, this sad, but too common marriage of codependency into which so many young lovers fall, is a masterpiece of pathos and empathy.

"But is it about Richard and Linda?" we anxiously want to ask. Well, the answer is that we will never know - and possibly Thompson could not tell you definitively himself. What does remain is Thompson’s extraordinary sensitivity to the blind psychology of love, and it is as obviously doubtful that he never experienced it as it is for all the rest of us.

In the end, the biographical details are irrelevant (though admittedly unavoidable in this context). What remains starkly relevant is Thompson’s return to the Brit-folk story form on which his first songwriting was originally based, and its renewed power to mine emotional gold. Richard Thompson will ever after use this time-honored technique of traditional balladry to evoke universal truths in the post-modern era. In "Devonside," the old Richard Thompson is irrevocably fused with the new, and a very old art form is once again given new life and power.

"Two Left Feet" - Hand of Kindness opens with raucous sarcasm, and it ends its emotional journey in the pure, unabashed joy of silliness. This polka-driven rave up features Thompson’s most succinct put down to date - "How can you dance with those two left feet?" Well, in the metaphorical depths of Richard Thompson’s sarcasm, "two left feet" could mean quite a bit indeed. Coming from this voice, this criticism can carry as many ominous overtones as one would care to imagine.

Still, this song reminds us that humor is as essential to Richard Thompson’s vision and art as any other component, and the effortless style of throw-away satire is at the core of his vision. Still, at the root, this song is mere fun.

In between verses and choruses, Thompson and his band play a charming little Celtic-rock ditty that may or not have some traditional source - but it effectively shoves that unique British perspective of timelessness that’s been going on since Fairport Convention. As the song continues, this melody is taken out of its harmonic boundaries and twisted up into something approaching an avant-garde jazz line. The shift is both stunning and hilarious, but it zooms quickly back to its source.

This riff, along with the raucous solos by the sax players, accordion, and finally Thompson’s wild, devil-may-care Stratocaster connect this, the final song, with the album’s opener, "Tear Stained Letter," and while it may lack the harsh ironic bite of that brilliant barn burner, together the two songs serve as perfect sandwich ends for the heartbreaking travails and hilarious send ups in between. The fact that this song works, and works so well, is a testament to the power of what has gone before it, and more precisely, the moral, musical, and spiritual power that Thompson has earned, not only over this album, but over a decade and a half.


Video - Richard Thompson performs acoustic version of "Two Left Feet"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=LQzVhBVQ7Z8

The fact that no one else could end an album as powerfully, as ridiculously cathartic as "Two Left Feet" is testimony to who Richard Thompson now is. Here, on Hand of Kindness, he definitively begins the solo career that he is still pursuing without interruption to this day. Emerging from the 1960s, from triumph and tragedy, emerging from the conjurations of hell and heaven in the 1970s, emerging from his great musical partnership, and its abrupt, messy fatalistic demise, Richard Thompson finally stands here alone as the mature, confident, albeit satiric and melancholic artist that is given its final definition.

I remember when this album first appeared, and I can still feel the exhilaration of its shocking impact on myself and my small cadre of friends who were (thanks to me) Thompson-savvy. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Hand of Kindness was its appearance in the MTV-dominated post-music world of 1983 as a life-affirming, genre-defying statement of individual purpose. Amidst all the other "real" music of the day, which was basically rooted in a commercial-defying, postpunk aesthetic (U2, R.E.M., X, the Smiths, XTC, the Replacements, etc.), this was something wholly different, yet somehow carrying the same kind of audacious power. In fact it was more powerful, considering the artist’s age and pedigree. Of the artists of Thompson’s generation, only Neil Young would be able of pulling off such a startling coup upon the new music scene, while retaining the essence of what he had established in the counter-culture period. And while Neil Young would prove increasingly (though interestingly) erratic from here on out, Richard Thompson would amazingly hold and even expand upon this form, functioning much in the same way for the next quarter century.

Given the seemingly paralyzed size and composition of Richard Thompson’s small, yet rabidly faithful audience, it is difficult to declaim precisely the enormity of his impact. But Thompson has always had a larger group of admirers than Vincent Van Gogh had, and his music, then and now, continues to remain a vitally important resource, not just for the fringes of the culture in which it operates, but in its ever-living potential for wider discovery. For Richard Thompson is such a powerful and unique artist, that his existence on the periphery merely highlights the enormous shortcomings of the center of our culture, and from the Thompsonite’s view, the perspectives are transposed - Thompson cuts to the core of our being and moves to the center of our emotional/aesthetic lives, casting the blaring, empty, official culture off to the meaningless sidelines where it belongs, cowering it his overwhelming shadow.

Another thing must be mentioned in regards to Hand of Kindness - and that is the spectacular, cohesive playing of the band, as well as Thompson’s skill and ease at being a bandmaster. It’s odd to remember that this group is basically Fairport Convention (minus Sandy Denny and Dave Swarbick), with saxophones to boot. But it’s all Richard’s show. Never before has he stood alone, so center stage, and good lord, does he have the aplomb to pull it off! We must also remember that here is also the birth of Richard Thompson, the great showman - always before he played a supporting role, even if he had composed all the material. To say that he exhibits true star quality here is not only an ironic understatement, but ultimately, to be missing the point.

Thompson’s move to the spotlight was not just an aesthetic decision, but somewhat circumstantially determined, now that he and Linda had parted. That this naturally shy young man was finally emotionally capable of coming out and commanding an audience, speaking on his own, says volumes about his personal development, now at the ripe old age of 31. That he did so - and so victoriously - is a tribute to his great sense of nerve in overcoming an inferiority complex (which, considering his genius and virtuosity is truly silly). But it is more than that - Richard Thompson’s bold first step on his own here represents the emergence of the self-reliant individual, who - truth be told - has put himself in his own position, to sink or swim. That he not only swims, but surfs and glides was probably a surprise to no one but him.

And this is probably the key, after all, to "Both Ends Burning," which can be read as a self-effacing look at his own dogged career, along with the surprise at his own attempt at success on his own. Sales and airplay aside, Hand of Kindness is a stunning success from start to finish, a bravura sense of self-release, yet still carrying all the weight and baggage of all the achievements in which he has participated, and has now left behind.

In the last analysis, Hand of Kindness is the birth of a true icon - the artist that one can turn to in solitude and measure their own sense of personal achievement and efforts of survival against. He is now, and will remain, a survivalist’s sounding board, a true test case - a constant, both in effort and honesty, by which one can feel reflected one’s own sense of tenacity, sanity, combined with the ridiculousness of the notion of the weight of the entire world on one’s shoulders.

If there’s one artist you’re going to be able to trust from here on out, it’s Richard Thompson. He simply is incapable of being anything other than what he is - even if that includes being brilliantly talented. That unique, humbling combination is what finally makes him so desperately important, perhaps even necessary, especially to those dwelling on the fringe of a society that values none of his essential virtues.

Shoot Out the Lights

Video - A Solitary Life, part 4

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0WwYlqLe0HA


Richard and Linda Thompson: Shoot Out the Lights [April 1982]

Regardless of questions and opinions regarding aesthetic value in Richard Thompson’s previous or subsequent work, there is no question that this is the central album in his career, the record that put him on whatever map he does exist on, and for so many reasons that elude numeration. For whatever remarkable achievements he had already accomplished, would continue to achieve, and will subsequently attain, there is no question that Shoot Out the Lights will forever be perceived as his defining work, his one unquestioned essential album, and his key contribution to the canonical works of rock music.

For there are certain albums, along with certain songs, which simply transcend any objective assessment - they resonate so strongly that their power simply creates a new kind of archetype, a living touchstone in the artistic stream. In short, they become mythical, and in so doing, tie their creators (for better or worse) to these epochal statements.

Contributing in no small manner to its mythic status, the album, recorded in 1981, and released in spring 1982, is intimately connected to the perceived real lives of its creators, which, whether accurate are not, hit such a sharp universal nerve among contemporary critics, that its power forced Richard and Linda Thompson upon what public was there to receive it. The album (and its subsequent U.S. tour) not only introduced the pair to what public attention they would (so briefly) enjoy, but its resounding power laid the foundation for Richard Thompson’s continuing solo career.

I cannot personally recall so much verbal hyperbole for a record at the time of its release for an artist with whom I was previously unfamiliar, appearing on virtually every music publication’s Top Ten list for the year. Likewise, there are few albums indeed, that upon first hearing was I so smitten - indeed, astonished - with the contents that such hyperbole seemed sorely insufficient to do it justice.

Critical appraisal has held up. At the end of the decade, Rolling Stone magazine voted it #9 of their 100 Greatest Albums of the 1980s. And in the new millennium, it retains its status, ranking in at #333 on the magazine’s 100 Greatest Albums of All Time. (The relatively low ranking - one feels it should have been at least in the top 100 - does not reflect a diminished view of the disc. Rather, the summation of so many "classic" albums, primarily from the 1960s and 1970s simply swamps it in a flood of too-familiar titles. Its steadfast maintenance as a landmark release from two still-virtually-unknown artists reflects its defiant status as a verified classic.)

While the sheer visceral power of the record, so apparently raw, naked and stark in the portrayal of the couple’s break-up - (more on this in a moment) - most definitely helped to inspire critical awe, fresh listening reveals the more than ample justification of this assessment some 25 years after the fact. Truth be told, all personal issues aside, Shoot Out the Lights remains simply one of the most beautiful, intense and powerful albums ever produced in the rock era. Its inspiration may have come from premonitions of marital disaster, but its greatness lies in the simply breathtaking breadth and depth of its songwriting, along with the fully matured and passionately peaked fever of its execution.

This is in no way to suggest that the material on the album can ever be truly divorced from its emotional wellsprings. But let us do well to remember that the Thompsons had not only were not going through the traumas of marital breakdown while recording the album. Remember that Richard had written, and the duo had recorded, six of the album’s eight songs the year before, and the argument for the record as a document of the duo’s demise becomes even more specious. That Shoot Out the Lights was conceived and produced simply as a new album for Joe Boyd’s Hannibal Records label, and was meant in every sense to further and sustain the careers of Richard and Linda Thompson is documented beyond question.

On the other hand, whatever lurking feelings of pain, dread, and paranoia were unrolling themselves in the back of Richard Thompson’s brain as he composed these dark, harried and desperate compositions certainly did come to fruition in their aftermath. Something was undeniably wrong, and whether conscious or not, the fact remains that Richard did leave his wife for another woman, abruptly and permanently, soon after the record had been finished.

In the final analysis, to listen to Shoot Out the Lights and not think of it as an unconscious
document of a relationship’s death is simply impossible. Not only are the themes of emotional dissolution too explicit, they are simply too powerful - too real - to be discarded as "mere art." As the drama of their lives unfolded precisely in the terms the album describes, and life begins imitating art, we cannot be convinced that art - at least subconsciously - did not begin by imitating life.

Pour Down Like Silver’s ecstatic revelations notwithstanding, one need flip through Thompson’s back catalog, even in Fairport Convention days, to see a young, sensitive, distrustful man, constantly "watching the dark." Someone so sensitive to the ironies and failures of life, an artist continually placing himself in communion with his darkest of muses, he had always opened up his pores to filter through the all the false representations, the fluid fluxes and changes, to reach a critical core of an unflinching vision of life as an essentially horrific joke is not a man easily fooled. At least he is not fooled in his art.

Richard Thompson, the husband and father, wanting to be and do the right things, might not have allowed the consciousness of the insufferable state of his marriage when he wrote the songs. But Richard Thompson, the intuitive artist, could not ignore the rumblings within - and compassionate balladeer that he is, he could neither filter out the potential effects of his emotional estrangements would have on his suffering companion. For the songs on Shoot Out the Lights are not merely those of paranoia and disaster, but guilt, self-loathing and, most importantly, incredible compassion.

I must confess that I do hate analyzing music (or any art) on such a personal level - but that some works (John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Astral Weeks, Blood on the Tracks, for example) absolutely demand it. To ignore their human subtexts is to artificially separate them from their essential emotional context.

The final proof of the, not validity but absolute necessity of this approach, for Shoot Out the Lights comes, ultimately, on the performances of the then-separated duo on the phenomenally bizarre and brave tour to promote the album, when the no-longer-speaking non-husbad/non-wife team nightly poured out this emotional content live onstage before forever going their separate ways. By all accounts, these amazing, discomforting shows were so powerfully real in their emotional content that the power of the songs themselves are absolutely justified. Simply put, music does not get much more powerful than this.

One more word before delving into this masterpiece more intently, and that must be about Linda Thompson. From the duo’s first album, she had more than held her own as a wonderful singer, and the most sensitive interpreter of her husband’s songs. Here, she not only meets him with an equal footing, but often times she surpasses him. Shoot Out the Lights is designed, unlike any other Richard & Linda Thompson album, as a series of dialogues between male and female. Whenever Linda takes up her cue, she takes up the material given her, and simply dominates it. As if the song were being composed to steal away her identity, she simply rises up, re-appropriates the melody and words and transforms them ultimately in her own defiant image, and in so doing, becomes simply one of the greatest singers (and artists) of her time, giving her full equality with Richard, even if just for a moment, and rendering herself as mythically large as he. She does not go out of the picture as a victim, but as a conqueror - and there is no question that she fulfills the demand to stand eye to eye with him in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, whether placed on earth, or in the grander, transcendent pantheon of true artists and pop-cultural gods.

"Don’t Renege on Our Love" - The album opens with a full-speed, minor-key gallop of electric guitars, bass and drum in a kind of chase reminiscent of "Borrowed Time," from Sunnyvista. But there is no conceit at work here. From beginning to end, this introductory song seethes with true desperation, the running of a man terrified, half out of his wits. When Richard’s voice first enters, we finally have reached the voice of his maturity - strangely rich and consonant, but also dreadfully disturbed. It is the sound of a man, frightened and astonished, a man fighting for his life:

Remember when we were hand in hand?
Remember, we sealed it with a golden band?
Now your eyes don’t meet mine,
You’ve got a pulse like fever,
Do I take you for a lover
Or just a deceiver?
Simple is simple and plain is plain,
If you leave me now you won’t come back again
When the game is up -
Ah, don’t renege on our love . . .

It is obvious that he has already lost the race. This is someone who has already lost his love, and he’s realized it too late to do anything about it.

As he continues, he becomes more angry, frustrated, and he begins to answer his declamations with savage strokes on his guitar. His arguments come faster, his objections more indignant:

Well, give me just an ounce of sympathy.
Give me my chains of liberty.
There’s a rope that binds us,
And I don’t want to break it.
If love is a healer,
Why should we forsake it?

Well hunger is hunger and need is need,
Am I just another mouth to feed
When the game is up?
Well, don’t renege on our love . . .

Anyone who knows anything about the history of the Thompsons will find it odd that it is Richard here who is begging the woman to remain steadfast in the marriage. It is after all, he that will soon be walking out on her to join a new lover. But that really is irrelevant. As we’ve noted, the songs on the album are not documentaries of the Thompson’s personal lives. But with this album, the personal context cannot be swept away from the mind of the knowledgeable listener. And more to the point, the realism, the directness of the performance ultimately gives the singer away. This is someone singing from his very gut.

Analyzed psychologically, it could be suggested that Richard Thompson wrote this song as an emphatic warning to himself, sympathetically anticipating the pain he could cause his wife through his leaving. Or it could be a reflection of deep-seated sense that something is indefinably wrong with his relationship and is fighting against the urge to run away from it, to keep faith. These questions are merely suggestive, and of course are ultimately unknowable (even to the composer). We can all play as analysts here, and whatever we may say or imagine does nothing but extend the meaning of the song for ourselves as we listen and project.

The fact does remain however, that "Don’t Renege" is a very powerful, urgent song that announces the main theme of fealty at the beginning of an album whose very core hovers around the difficulties of maintaining allegiances. It is a warning song in more way than one - it announces to the listener that we are entering treacherous territory, and that we’d better strap ourselves in.

The word "renege" is an odd, formal, almost archaic sort of word, and not something you would generally find in a pop song, however sophisticated. It implies a formal violation, the willful repudiation of something that has become to seem out of date - yet still it carries an enormous claim of responsibility. The references in the lyrics to the wedding ring, the "ropes that bind us," etc., display a respect for a moral obligation that goes beyond just feelings.

Anyone who has listened to Pour Down Like Silver knows how important, indeed how sacred the concept of commitment is to Richard Thompson. This is not just a human conviction, but a religious and spiritual one, and one that I remain certain that Thompson maintained then and maintains to this day.

It is the incredible tension of the tempted violation of this sacred bond that creates such urgency in the song. It is reminiscent of that special power contained in certain country & western songs dealing with divorce or adultery, wherein the context is eternal damnation (June Carter’s "Ring of Fire," for example). While most fear-of-love-loss songs center entirely on the internal emotions of the individual, Thompson’s move through those, and point beyond, to something eternal. The potential violation of that eternal bond is a haunting, damning demon, and it threatens not only the lover, but in some sense, the moral and spiritual essence of the universe.
In short, everything is at stake here - and it sounds like it.

Richard’s brief guitar solo treads up and down the fretboard questioningly, hovering uncertainly at jagged points that seem out of place, but he does not linger there long, returning, almost fearfully to the proper notes of the chord. In a mini foreshadowing of the pyrotechnical outspinnings of the title track, Richard’s lines delicately "test the edge" of their harmonic boundaries before retreating.

He continues singing in one last desperate attempt at salvaging the situation:

When my heart breaks, it breaks like the weather,
If you leave me now it’ll thunder forever.
Oh, don’t give it up.

He keeps repeating the refrain, pleadingly, "Don’t renege on our love," answered by a fatalistic chorus of bass-throated male voices chanting like doomed monks. He continues singing through an of unexpected modulations, suggesting that the song itself is careening out of his control.
Finally, there is a pause in the momentum of the chase - the driver has dropped his reigns. Richard plays a brief, static, chordal figure and comes to rest on an unresolved chord as the drum shifts to a slower, martial measure, and the song fades out slowly, waiting in hushed awe for its answer, all the while afraid that it will come.

Thus begins Shoot Out the Lights . . .

"Walking on a Wire" - If there were nothing else, this song alone would secure Richard and Linda Thompson’s immortality.

Richard’s most beautiful composition ever is stately, simple and slow, almost a lullaby of pain. Wrapped in a cushion of strummed acoustic guitar, it rocks plaintively to its sharp, insistent drum beat that barely seems to keep it afloat.

Linda’s most stunning vocal begins in what can only be described as an open-throated whisper. She sounds not so much plaintive as absolutely stunned by what she is singing, staring cat eyed into the glaring spotlight where she begins to reveal the uncertainty and pain in her soul - an uncertainty and pain that she didn’t even quite realize was there until she started singing about it. The song takes its time to develop and has a sense of self-discovery that eventually overawes the singer as much as the listener.

Her vocal functions much the same way as a Shakespearean soliloquy: she begins at an observation, a wondering, and as she listens to her own words, gradually she comes to realize the depth of the yawning void that surrounds her:

I hand you my ball and chain,
You just hand me the same old refrain.
I’m walking on a wire,
I’m walking on a wire,
And I’m falling.

Richard’s electric guitar kicks in along with the drums, where it will continue to hover about her, answering in sympathetic, yet helpless counterpoint to her yearning questions of self:

I wish that I could please you tonight,
But my medicine just won’t come right.
I’m walking on a wire . . .

The imagery returns us to the skills of "The Great Valerio," from I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, but here there are no "acrobats of love." She is simply falling.
Linda herself has described "Walking on a Wire" as "a portrait of a disintegrating personality," and it is absolutely chilling to listen to it as it occurs.

In the bridge, the harmonic structure is seemingly taken out of her control, new chords building up, one on top of the other, and she must follow it with a melody that matches, pulling her more and more out of herself, until it feels as though she is going to split from her soul. The word come quicker and more desperately:

Too many steps to take,
Too many spells to break,
Too many nights awake
And no one else.

Richard’s guitar seems to carve these climbing phrases in the air, while Linda has no choice but to follow them upward to see where they lead:

This grindstone’s wearing me,
Your claws are tearing me . . .

Finally, the guitar seems to take pity on her, leading her gently back down as she sings to a resting point, still sad, but bearable:

Don’t use me endlessly,
It’s too long,
Too long
To myself.

She recovers just long enough to continue her lament:

Where’s the justice and where’s the sense,
When all the pain is on my side of the fence?
I’m walking on a wire . . .

Richard’s guitar enters to relieve her with a solo that is stately and solemn, maintaining her mood, but still bearing her dignity. As he continues, he becomes more anxious and fidgety, moving up the scale in chords and squiggles until he himself reaches a peak and has to run back down with a jaw-dropping series of two-note runs that finally crash back into the beginning of the bridge.

Linda’s second trip back through the puzzling ladder of the bridge sounds more desperate, probably because she is more self aware, and the emotional strain of the journey shows her practically cracking at the seams. But the downturn comes again, dropping her to a point where she has enough strength to propose a final verse:

It scares you when you don’t know
Whichever way the wind might blow.
I’m walking on a wire,
I’m walking on a wire,
And I’m falling.

She repeats the refrain again, Richard singing harmony. The song pauses for just a deadly moment.

Suddenly, as if with a last, despairing gasp, she leaps up a full octave and shouts out the refrain again, this time not with stoic acceptance, but with a full-throated shout that seems to be simultaneously a scream of self-abandonment and a liberating cry of ultimate transcendence.
She is gone . . .

Richard quickly takes her place with one of the most frantic guitar solos ever recorded by man, a crying, quivering, screaming line with note-bending cries and hammer-offs that reverberate like sobs. He takes this wailing lamentation as far as it can go in the structure of the verse, pauses once for reverence, then stately ends on the bottom-most note, which he must twist the gear-head on his guitar neck to be able to come up to reach.

I have heard very few more powerfully, affecting compositions and performances anywhere in my life. The impact of this song left me absolutely stunned upon first hearing - and it does so to this day.

Amazingly, after Richard’s abrupt departure, Linda, still in shock and anguish, full of booze and pills to ward off her demons, insisted on singing this song night after night on their U.S. tour to promote the album. Through enacting in public the breakdown of her private persona, Linda faced her pain and made herself cope with the reality of her own "disintegration," ultimately paving the way for the long period of self healing that would follow. In so doing, she also gave some of the bravest and greatest performances in the history of song.

Video - Richard & Linda Thompson: "Walking on a Wire"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=OQQQGrk2AwQ

"A Man in Need" - This stomping, virulent declaration of both independence and dislocation has over the years become something akin to Richard Thompson’s theme song. It kicked off the 1993 3-disc retrospective, Watching the Dark, and Thompson plays it in his concerts to this day.
The opening lines seem prescient as to the events that would occur over the next year:

I packed my rags, went down the hill,
Left my dependents a-lying still.
Just as the dawn was rising up
I was making good speed.
I left a letter lying on the bed -
"From a man in need," it read,
You know it’s so hard to find,
It’s so hard to find,
Who’s going to cure the heart of a man in need?

In a sense this could be same character featured in "I’ll Regret It All in the Morning" from Hokey Pokey, but one who has finally decided to take some action.

The dual themes of restlessness coupled with yearning seem to define the Richard Thompson persona, and they will appear in various guises from songs all throughout his solo career. The sense of being alone in the world, adrift on a hopeless quest permeates so much of his work that they are practically the very substances out of which his songs are constructed.

Is this the way the real Richard Thompson feels? That is both irrelevant and unknowable. That this is the part of what any sensitive human being can feel is undeniable, and hence the universalism in this song, as well as in so many others. One can certainly make the supposition that these emotions were welling up in the young man of 30 or so, married to his musical partner - to his work - for nearly ten years by then, two children, with another on the way - who can say? Even Richard Thompson cannot say for certain. The point is that the song delivers all the emotional strains and contradictions of what is a very familiar human syndrome and delivers it clearly, forcefully and without obfuscation.

The protagonist, the "man in need" may have everything that objectively you could think he could want. But he is really living within the confines of a trap that he has laid for himself. His home, his family, you would think, would be a comfort for him. But they are only props in which he has taken refuge, and that now are seen to be the obstacles which prevent him from leading an authentic, fulfilled life. At the beginning of the song, the protagonist has made his decision, and is defiantly taking leave of them to search for his true self. But just what that is - that he still cannot say.

He is well aware that he looks ridiculous in the eyes of the world. Those outside of his experience cannot imagine what he’s going through:

All of my friends don’t comprehend me,
Their kind of style, it just offends me.
I want to take ‘em, I want to shake ‘em
‘Till they pay me some heed.

Thompson virtually spits these words out of his mouth in angry frustration. His delivery of the song is incredibly convincing, and the listener gets a palpable sense that he means everything he sings with every fibre of his being. His act of singing seems to be a kind of primal scream, a way to break through a wall that both encloses himself and separates everyone in the world from his ability to communicate with them on a real level. Right now their ears are cut off from his voice, drowned as they are by their own questions of "Just what is your problem?" "How do you answer such a dilemma?"

Thompson shouts the obvious answer right back to them:

You’ve got to ride in one direction
Until you find the right connection.
You know it’s so hard . . .

His only companion here is his guitar, which he doubles on the track, lending himself his own support in a solo of self-righteous defensiveness. He returns to asking the hard questions:

Who’s going to give you real happiness?
Who’s going to give you contentedness?
Who’s going to lead you? Who’s going to feed you?
And cut you free?

And here is the real dilemma. How can an individual live a life of freedom if they are indeed dependent upon another person? And that’s the problem - he cannot. But that doesn’t stop his yearning. This is a cyclical problem, and the singer clearly recognizes that there’s no way out of the situation. His questions get louder, more insistent, more demandingly unreasonable:
Well, who’s going to shoe your feet?

Who’s going to pay your rent?
And who’s going to stand by you?

Just who is going to "cure the heart of a man in need?" The answer is plainly clear and does not need stating. "Nobody." It is, in the end, a quest that once undertaken can neither be realized nor abandoned. But the moving action itself is the very thing that defines the individual in all his honesty. His situation in hopeless, but his private consolation is that he is finally, ultimately, asserting his actualized selfhood.

So hard, indeed.

Video - Richard & Linda Thompson: "A Man in Need"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QhOSiaD8x2A

"Just the Motion" - The next song is Linda again, and by now it is clear that Shoot Out the Lights is developing into a kind of dialogue between opposites, between conflicting states of mind that must be put together to see the entire puzzle of meaning. That all of the songs on this album are arguably great, even masterpieces, it is the breadth of vision that allows both sides to be alternately heard and understood that gives the album its true greatness.

Just coming off the defiant declaration of "A Man in Need" is the female’s reaction to such impossible demands. In a very different way, her answer is the same as his: acceptance.
In a harmonic setting of almost-still, lilting chords, played by acoustic guitar and delicately embellished by Richard’s gentle electric lines, Linda sings passively, almost completely devoid of emotion. She almost sounds as if she isn’t there at all:

When you’re rocked on the ocean, rocked up and down, don’t worry.
When you’re spinning and turning around and around, don’t worry.
You’re just feeling sea-sick, you’re just feeling weak,
You’re mind is confused and you can’t seem to speak,
It’s just the motion, it’s just the motion.

The response given to life’s blows here are equated with the unalterable rhythms of nature. One cannot change them. There is no need to protest or argue, or even to object. Your only recourse is to surrender yourself to the inevitable with a kind of stoic withdrawal. The world is not coming to an end - it’s only the natural vibrations of life that necessarily must carry with them pain.
That the song was specifically intended for the female perspective is made more clear in the second verse:

When the landlord is knocking and your job is losing, don’t worry.
And the baby needs rocking, and your friends are confusing, don’t worry.

Here the lyrics seem to suggest the demands of motherhood, along with all the other strains of life in the modern world. One can’t help but jump to the next sentiment, which is not stated: "When your husband has left you for another woman, don’t worry."

Is Richard Thompson here unconsciously attempting to write a prescription for his wife’s suffering, after imagining himself leaving triumphantly in "A Man in Need?" Is this a gift given to her out of guilt? It is impossible to say, and such speculation is certainly stretching the point. But the notion seems to fit so well that it is impossible to dismiss the implications, whether intended, consciously or not.

Just what sort of advice is withdrawal, anyway? Whether it is him telling her, or her telling herself, the answer is clearly a lie. To deny life’s problems is no solution, merely a defense mechanism. And of course Richard Thompson clearly sees that. The song is a song of a self coping with the uncopable.

In the beautiful bridge, the melody and harmony open up to new emotional territory, and Linda’s sense of hurt and rage is allowed to be given scope. The effect is achingly painful to hear:

Rocked by a hundred winds, knocked down a hundred times,
Rescued and carried along. Beaten and half dead and gone,
And it’s only the pain that’s keeping you sane
And gives you a mind to travel on.

After another verse, Richard joins in to give her emotional support (or at least sympathy) in a subtly stated guitar solo. The bridge is repeated to great emotional effect, then everything hangs in a brief suspension, as if reaching the crest of a wave, before continuing to the last verse. As Linda sings, the instrumentation dissipates to its most minimal level, then slowly returns, continuing the rocking motion implicit in the song:

Oh, the motion won’t leave you, won’t leave you alone, don’t worry.
It’s a restless wind and sleeping rain, don’t worry,
‘Cause under the ocean, at the bottom of the sea,
You can’t feel the waves, it’s as peaceful as can be.
It’s just the motion . . .

This final image of ultimate withdrawal to the core of emotional depths within, promising escape is as empty a promise as one can imagine. This is cold comfort indeed, and both the singer and the composer know that this solution is false. Yet oddly, at the same time, it seems the only sane way to keep a personality from completely succumbing to the insurmountable odds of some onslaught.

This sweet and terrible song, this lovely, ironic port in a storm is, in the final analysis, only a temporary solution. It gorgeously, sadly ends side one of this masterful, humane album. The beginning of side two will dramatically, decisively prove to shatter any illusions lingering about the individual’s apparent safety in a network of withdrawal.

In a sense, Shoot Out the Lights is a kind of emotional laboratory, where different situational, conceptual stances are tried out in response to the uncontrollable world upon which we subsist. Each attempted perspective is alternately tried on, only to be abandoned (or conquered) by a succeeding mood - each one ultimately inadequate for sustaining a mythical construction of self in which one can be either fully actualized or kept safe. The album will continue this back-and-forth struggle until its final resolution.

"Shoot Out the Lights" - We have heard Richard Thompson exploring the depths of nihilistic horror before, peering into a void that peers back, on "Calvary Cross." We have heard his guitar searching, penetrating into vast, unstudied rooms of possibility on "Night Comes In." Here, we abruptly encounter a fusion of these two approaches on this jaw-dropping masterpiece, and the resonances are unbearably shocking in both their force and their bottomless excursions into the endless realm of the dark subconscious itself.

To call "Shoot Out the Lights" a tour de force is to diminish it. Yes, it is ultimately here that one wants to turn just to demonstrate Thompson’s mastery of the electric guitar. Its fireworks display is truly of Hendrix-like proportion, which is to say it is almost inconceivably great. Most comparisons to Jimi Hendrix are woefully passing to surface-level similarities of the guitar’s greatest genius - here Thompson actually matches him in intensity, virtuosity and power, while actually superceding him in horrific self consciousness. Of course Thompson’s sound and approach to the guitar is is completely different from his forerunner, and radically his own, it must be said that this is truly one of the few works on electric guitar that fulfills the astonishing template that Hendrix uncannily established in his too-short career.

However great the guitar solos, however, this is not the focus of "Shoot Out the Lights." The masterful, mind-boggling guitar lines are merely the extensions of a song of such darkness and fear that it seems to rip itself, uncalled, from Thompson’s own deepest subconsciousness. Quite simply put, there is nothing anywhere like it recorded.

To say that "Shoot out the Lights" "punctures" the false tranquility of the dreamy escape of "Just the Motion" is somewhat like saying that a nuclear attack can spoil a nice picnic. This, the emotional center and core of the album, blasts such a withering whole into any facade of artistry that every other song here cannot help but be seen in its all-conquering light.

"Shoot Out the Lights" is the outward manifestation of an inward demon that is too powerful either to destroy or ignore - for it is the eruption of the irrational, death-loving, self-hating nature that takes the form of a stalking killer. The blasting, ugly perambulations of electric guitar chords, bass and drum are the unstoppable footsteps of this living death wish as it moves across the dark cityscape. The lyrics are less of a narrative than a device in which this unquenchable, destructive emotional force embodies itself:

In the dark, who can see his face?
In the dark, who can reach him?
He hides like a child.
He hides like a child.
Keeps his finger on the trigger,
You know he can’t stand the day.
Shoot out the lights.
Shoot out the lights.

Thompson talks/sings these words in a deep, haunted voice, as if in a trance. It is not an observation - it is a voice that seems to be speaking through him. His vocal creeps through the relentless onslaught of the huge, lumbering chords, caught in a kind of sleepwalk. He is more chanting than singing.

That his narrative is told in third person is completely irrelevant here. The singer here is not so much singing about himself as simply manifesting the emergence of the force as it envelops anything. "He" could be translated into "me," "we," "they," or most precisely "it."
As the chords crash down on the refrain ("Shoot out the lights/Shoot out the lights"), it is less a description than it is a sense of will. And it seems, ultimately, less a directive to an individual or situation as it is a benediction, a fatalistic blessing of a deed already accomplished.
He continues:

Keep the blinds down on the window.
Keep the pain on the inside.
Just watching the dark,
Just watching the dark.
Ah, he might laugh, but you won’t see him
As he thunders through the night.
Shoot out the lights . . .

It is the action of burying the unbearable within oneself that creates the monster. Within, all fear and pain festers and grows until it escapes and runs rampage, like a Frankenstein monster. It’s inside of everyone, and it’s just waiting for a triggering release. "Just watching the dark" - in this one impossible phrase Thompson captures the very essence of the soul in inner turmoil, constantly held at bay, but due to release at any given moment.

Thompson’s first guitar solo lets the monster loose. Playing with the tuning of his lowest string, he immediately creates a sense of unstableness. His fiery runs lead him back and forth from this point, and finally to a high, hanging, shrieking series of unresolved notes that dangle perilously, waiting breathlessly for the massive chord change to finally come along and save them. When it does come, he runs breathlessly across the fretboard, seemingly trying to get away,
Just what kind of music is this? "Shoot Out the Lights" holds a sustained tension between controlled, virtuosic display and pure exploding rock blast. Not exactly jazz, not exactly heavy metal - the song carries more the brooding nihilistic flair of the early-eighties punk rock that was currently in vogue in places like Los Angeles. But astute critics noted that Richard Thompson adroitly "out-punked" punk in this savage display of raw power and emotion. Schooled as it is in masterly improvisational techniques, the song remains a raw, bleeding sledgehammer of true power and despair. (Tellingly, the greatest of the L.A. punk bands - X - would eventually record a cover version of the song for a Richard Thompson tribute album.)
The guitar returns to big, sustaining block chords as the lyrics resume:

In the darkness the shadows move.
In the darkness the game is real.
Real as a gun,
Real as a gun.
As he watches the lights of the city,
And he moves through the night -
Shoot out the lights . . .

"Real as a gun" is pretty damn real, indeed. Thompson keeps repeating the refrain like a chant, until his guitar returns and completely takes over. Here, he begins on a repeated line built of substitute chords that feel completely alien to the song as they enter, a shocking, dissonant display of an individual split in half, locked in his own compulsive spasms. He starts wandering all over the fretboard, bouncing, seemingly heedlessly from one inappropriate note to the next, all the time sustaining tension against the still, slowly repeating chords of the song. He freezes up into the highest register, impatiently screaming a note, breathlessly waiting for the chords to resolve. He finally succumbs, playing a series of sharp, descending slides that sound like inverted fireworks crashing to the earth.

But it is not over - the beast won’t die so easily. He rattles low on the strings, like a ghost creeping about the base of a house, then jumps in with some chord runs that sound like Chuck Berry’s paranoid voodoo nightmare. Finally, it all comes down crashing in staccato stabs that stab like little knives down to the conclusion.

Even as the song ends, the demon remains, appearing in ghostly harmonics swirling up and around the final chords, all unresolved.

"Shoot Out the Lights" abruptly interrupts the dialogue of the album, seemingly hijacking the proceedings with a final denunciation that lays waste to everything in its path. If this album can be seen to document a decaying relationship, it’s dead right here. "Shoot out the lights," it’s all over, it seems to say. There is no turning back at this point. What was once is gone and dead, and this guitar-slinger is both its weapon and its killer.

I can think of no song I have ever heard as simultaneously sophisticated and savage as "Shoot Out the Lights." Richard Thompson would near these heights (depths?) again, but never equal them, which is probably a good thing if you think about it. But what could possibly follow in the wake of it on this album?

Video - Richard Thompson performs "Shoot Out the Lights"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=RfVEHjhnsEc

"Backstreet Slide" - The problem here is solved by a kind of dodge. This is a savage, mean little song that diverts the direction of the album from the previous back-and-forth, male-female dialectic of the rest of the record. Instead of attempting to immediately answer "Shoot Out the Lights," "Backstreet Slide" deals more with its aftermath in the general community. It is nothing short than a blaring "fuck you" to any potential critics of the existential meltdown that just preceded it.

In what is becoming another uncanny series of premonitions, "Backstreet Slide" seems to anticipate and hold off the would-be critics of the Thompsons’ divorce, slapping it back in their faces defiantly as nobody’s business. It is a nasty rebuke of nasty, gossipy people who most definitely should mind their own business. The vocal, sung by Richard (with Linda on harmony on verses) is probably his angriest sounding yet. God knows to what (if anything) he was reacting when he wrote and performed it, but it sounds like he means every god-damned word of it.

Reverting momentarily to the British folk-rock form that seems to have all but vanished from the Thompson’s palate, the song begins in a harsh, electric jabbing that moves like a series of punches in place of footsteps at a reel.

The objects of derision are (female) gossips that so casually destroy a person’s reputation:

Those backstreet women, watch what you say,
You turn your back, and they slide away.
They run next door, they give it all away,
Doing the slide.

The chorus turns the gossips’ activities into a kind of dance:

The backstreet slide, the backstreet slide,
They’re gonna get you, dead or alive,
Stab you in the back with a kitchen knife,
Doing the slide,
Do it all day, the backstreet slide.

The subject matter may seem insubstantial after the volcanic eruptions of "Shoot Out the Lights," but the quick beat is a contrast, and coupled with the snarl of the song, moves it along quite effectively.

Thompson adds a mocking guitar solo in seeming mimic of the gossips’ tongues, playing on the cliche’ of rapid minor-second hammer-offs to suggest the vacuity of their babble.

As verses keep coming, and the chorus keeps returning, Thompson’s vocals simply drip venom:

Slide over here, slide over there,
Spreading that scandal everywhere,
Stab you in the back, and they just don’t care,
Doing the slide . . .

The derision is contagious, and the rocking, minor key taunting of the song makes it quickly perhaps the most catchy and deliriously driving of any song on the album.

The end features an extended coda, with a descending set of chords that repeat like slaps, until finally - boom! - it’s answered by a major-key British dancing jig, complete with fluttering accordion. The surprise and utter sarcasm of this musical device is pure, snotty joy, as the beat sustains the same drive while the two themes jump back and forth between each other in savage mocking.

"Let’s slide!" shouts Thompson, as the song is carried out to its nasty, curt conclusion. Never mind the bollocks, indeed!

Video: Richard Thompson Performs "Back Street Slide"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=gAm6Zj99IZY

"Did She Jump Or Was She Pushed" - One could conceivably say that there is no "answer" song possible to "Shoot Out the Lights," with its violent, nihilistic sense of finality. Miraculously, there is one right here. The last Richard & Linda Thompson song to be performed by Linda is a call from the grave, a ghostly question from the aftermath of a holocaust, and it takes the album even deeper into dangerous emotional territory than probably any pop/rock record has ever delved before or since.

It is also the only Richard & Linda song to be credited to both participants, every other song in their catalogue being a composition completely of Richard’s. What Linda brought to the composition of this haunting masterpiece is unknown, but the overall effect is one of a female’s unique and privileged perspective, albeit delivered after the fact.

From the very beginning of their partnership, Linda has demonstrated the extraordinary ability to sing emotion-laden material without any audible expression of emotion (i.e., "The Great Valerio"), but this extraordinary restraint finds its ultimate execution here. She sings the song as a cipher, as if she were not even there. The narrative of the song is in the third person ("she"), and in the past tense, so the subject only exists in the past tense. However, the closeness with which she delivers the lyrics, the way she floats on the beautiful melody, inevitably fuses her performance with her subject matter. There is no question in the listener’s mind that Linda Thompson is here singing about herself.

That the song was written and recorded before their breakup is a fact. It is startling, therefore, to realize that this final vocal from Linda is not a literal commentary of herself as victim, just as it is impossible not to hear it that way after the fact. There is no way of knowing the couple’s exact emotional state during the time of the recording, and one can only sensibly attribute the associated biographical meanings to an incredibly intuitive artistic sensibility on the singer’s part, a profound ability to "get inside" of a song and inhabit it. That Linda Thompson has always had that capacity is obviously clear right from the beginning of I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight.

The other strangely beautiful aspect of the song is the composition itself. How can something so perfect, so right, emerge unknowingly from a composer’s mind in regards to a situation that had not actualized itself as of yet? The only answer, again, is the powerful sensitivity of the author(s) to such an imagined situation, and it displays, in Richard Thompson’s case, a clearly understood depth of empathy and guilt that informs all of his greatest work.

The song begins as two unresolved guitar chords brush back and forth between one another to create the musical form of a question, of a mystery. Linda’s voice emerges with the practically single-note melody and begins the narrative, cool, undisturbed and straightforward:

She was there one minute and then she was gone the next.
Lying in a pool of herself with a broken neck.

The words have tremendous economy and power, delivering the violence of the imagery with a matter-of-factness that is palpably frightening. As the verse continues, the chords begin a strange series of modulations that reinforce the nature of puzzlement, as Linda takes us through all the details:

She fell from the roof to the ground.
There was glass lying all around.
She was broken in a hundred pieces
When her body was found.

The verses are divided into two parts. There is a brief pause, then Linda returns to the first part of the melody to complete the entire section. Here, she focuses on the victim’s life, in double-tracked harmony with herself:

She used to live life, she used to live life with a vengeance.
And the chosen would dance, the chosen would dance in attendance.

The double tracking creates an eerie feeling of her singing along with herself - either as observer and subject, or perhaps as subject, before and after. The use of the phrase "life with a vengeance" hammers home the stunning reality of death ever closer. The second line, above, displays a sense of power in life, a kind of aristocratic station and direction of will that makes death even more alien a notion.

As the verse begins its conclusion, the guitars strike power chords, the drums pound militantly, as if the vocals suggest the mustering of arms to lead someone to a firing squad. Linda observes:

She crossed a lot of people,
Some she called friends.
She thought she’d live forever,
But forever always ends.

Did the dead woman abuse her power or station? Is she being called complicit in her own death? The chorus comes quickly to supply us with the answer, or rather a non-answer, as a question only remains. Any "answer" is merely the correct way to form the question:

Did she jump or was she pushed?
Did she jump or was she pushed?
Did she jump or was she pushed?

This simple question is asked, over and over, to the accompaniment of a slow march tempo, beautiful guitar arpeggios, and Richard’s dark voice joining back in the mix. There finally comes no answer, and the voices finally fall silent as the martial instruments of the chorus solemnly end.

The two gently clashing guitar chords return, as if to begin the next verse. Instead, Richard enters on electric guitar with a quietly probing solo that seems intent on getting to the bottom of the question itself. It twists and turns with the odd maze of the harmonic structure, but finally exits the tangle still unresolved.

Linda begins the next verse, still double tracked:

She used to have style, she used to have style, and she used it.
And they say it turned bad when the truth came ‘round and she refused it.

What does this last line mean? What was the "truth" that the subject would nor or could not acknowledge? Was it the disruption of the illusion of her life? Was it a betrayal by a friend or lover? We are not told - we are only given more facts that leave an enigma as to her end:

They found some fingerprints
Right around her throat.
The didn’t find no killer,
And they didn’t find no note.

"Fingerprints" certainly suggest an attacker, though they may not mean that the attack was part of a murder, or was, rather, the prelude to a suicide. There is no doubt some violence has been done to her, however. Clearly, she is a victim - but just how much did she contribute to her own destruction?

The refrain asks the same question, over and over again, with no resolution in sight.
"Did she jump or was she pushed?" Just exactly what are we asking here? If we are examining a human casualty of some sort of lifestyle, we might question to what degree did she bring on her own demise? In the context of a relationship dissolving, we may ask what part did the person play in bringing about her own rejection or betrayal?

In the end, perhaps it really does not matter. The calamity is the central fact, and there is no question but that the subject of the song is a victim. There is, in the unanswerable question of the refrain, contained the eternal enigma of question of inevitability. Could this disaster have been avoided? What can be learned?

Ultimately, as I read the song, there is no way to engage in life - especially in love and relationships - without risking everything. If we re-contextualize this text with the (once and again, unavoidably!) Thompson’s own personal history as it would soon enact itself, the fact that Richard would (or could) leave Linda is an inevitable and universal condition of the fact of her marriage and commitment to him.

When one does not risk all, one is not completely engaged, and in the great dance of life, not to be engaged is to relinquish life itself. If there is no risk, there is no gain. And if there is gain, there is always the chance of loss - even utter and complete loss.

Which still does not answer the question of the ultimate responsibility here? "Did She Jump Or Was She Pushed" does not answer its own question. It certainly does not condemn the singer, nor does it in any way let the author of the song off the hook. It simply hangs in the air, ever mysteriously taunting, asking for an accountability that cannot ever be truly given.

Here, so close to the end, Shoot Out the Lights leaves the singer dangling, without any certain answer to hold onto. Nor does it do any more for the listener. We are left out on a ledge, dangling, as the softly crushing chords continue and the searching guitar goes on puzzling aimlessly until the song’s fade.

In truth, the album could end here, justifiably asserting the lack of any possible resolution to life’s problems. We would still be in possession of a masterpiece - one of the wisest and most sublime albums ever made by any artists.

That it does not end here is testament to something no less than a miracle . . .

Video - Richard Thompson performs "Did She Jump or Was She Pushed"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=4MvZ39Ddlfc

"Wall of Death" - The fact that Richard Thompson wrote this, arguably his greatest song is astounding enough. That it found its place here, as the grand finale to possibly the most profoundly tortured album ever recorded by pop/rock artists, is something that elicits nothing short of sheer awe.

How can such a troubled odyssey as Shoot Out the Lights end in anything like an affirmation, let alone a life-ennobling affirmation that does not dodge any of the hard-won, prickly truths of love and life? The fact that it does so, and does so in such a majestically, sweeping and powerful manner is nothing less than the proof of genius, as well as the profound inspiration of desperation and pain.

The structure, both musically and lyrically, of "Wall of Death" is very simple. It is simply a sustained metaphor of life as an amusement park ride, set to simple, open folk chords. Richard and Linda sing together, their voices entwined forever in a shared chant that locks them (and us) indissolubly together on a venture of the ride that we all must share.

What gives the song its power is the indescribable strength of the name of the thrill ride - "The Wall of Death" - combined with the singers’ not only acceptance, but insistence upon riding it:

Let me ride on the Wall of Death one more time.
Let me ride on the Wall of Death one more time.
You can waste your time on the other rides,
This is the nearest to being alive.
Oh, let me take my chances on the Wall of Death.

Wherever it came from, Thompson has happened upon an irreducibly powerful name here - a metaphor for life, with all its attendant risks. The shock of the name does not diminish as they sing it, even after 25 years of hearing it. To desire this, the most dangerous - indeed fatal - ride in the amusement park is to invoke and affirm everything that life has in store. It is to have the courage to venture forth in the world as fully human, completely vulnerable, both to all the joys, richness and happiness that living as a human has to offer, as well as to the disappointments, pains, and even complete destruction of personality as well. To take one’s chance on the Wall of Death is, in essence, to give an unqualified "yes" to life, regardless of the consequences. Indeed, not to place oneself in such a vulnerable position is rejected as a "waste (of) time."

This, then, is the ultimate retort and summation of all the tangled, twisted, nightmarish voids that have been visited on the album. It is also the ultimate justification for engaging oneself in a commitment to another, which may or may not work out in the end. For the Thompson’s, as we know, the ride did not turn out happily - but that does not mean it was not worth the trip. If either of them are still alive after the ride is over (and they will be), they will pick themselves up and go back to ride it alone, or with another.

The bridge expostulates on the experience:

On the Wall of Death all the world is far from me.
On the Wall of Death, it’s the nearest to being free.

If the Wall of Death is "the nearest to being alive," how can the world be said to seem far apart? The answer, I believe, is that it is the mundane world, the unreal world of day-to-day, busy, pointless acts of life that deflect us and distract us from our real meanings, our true selves, that are pushed into the background. Here, in the face of Death itself, is the one true place where anything worth having in life can be truly appreciated. By subjecting ourselves to the infinite possibilities (and potential cruelty) of fate, we ironically free ourselves from fear, and thus approximate the closest thing available to true human freedom.

The rest of the verses of the song detail the other rides you can "waste time" on. Each is a form of distortion or escape - "You can fly away on the Rocket or spin on the Mouse." All are merely ways of avoiding confrontation or commitment. All are safe activities, and all are merely useless.
In the context of a marriage, of a relationship, the "Wall of Death" is emblematic of the commitment of two souls to endure whatever may behap - even if the relationship is destined to end in failure or tragedy. For if one does not completely commit, there is no chance of the attendant ecstasies of communion. And with this transcendent joy in love, necessarily comes the risk of pain and loss. The alternative is a kind of wasteland, a wishy-washy world of non-committal half-being, wherein no one can be said to truly live.

The willful entry of two souls, wide eyed, into this dangerous realm of commitment is finally justified by the exquisite and horrific highs and lows of love. The song is sung with exuberance by the couple - passionately, openly embracing all the possibilities of life, which we, with hindsight, realize that they are bound to lose in the end. Yet in the playing, and the replaying of the song, one senses that all the pain and loss were truly worth it in the end.

This, of course, is the unescapable subtext that concludes the forced biographical reading of Shoot Out the Lights. What makes the song (as well as the album) so profoundly permanent is its extension beyond this reference to a more universal meaning of square-faced, open-hearted commitment to see life through to the end.

When all is said and done, Shoot Out the Lights remains one of the most powerful universal statements about life, love, pain and loss to be put to record. Within the context of its real-life protagonists, it is profoundly moving. Taken beyond them, and pointing to life as a whole, it is merely profound.

Video - Richard Thompson performs "Wall of Death"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=A_FJImYHkZk

BONUS TRACK

"Living in Luxury" - When Shoot Out the Lights was first released on compact disc, it came with a bonus studio track from the sessions for the album. While there is nothing wrong with that in itself, the way that the disc ended up being programmed gave the appearance that "Living in Luxury" was the final, culminating track of the album, following "Wall of Death." While "Luxury" is a nice enough song, it certainly pales in the fiery glory of its predecessor. Shoot Out the Lights ends definitively, powerfully and passionately, in "Wall of Death," and there is absolutely nothing left to be said about the matter. The bonus track, thus, inevitably threw off the balance as a whole, and in the present form of the compact disc, it has been removed.

I don’t think it necessarily should have had to been completely excised - by boldly printing "Bonus Track" on the disc sleeve, and separating it respectfully from "Wall of Death" by a good ten seconds or more of silence, it could serve as a pleasant little addendum to the album. But I will agree that it’s better to have it completely removed than to (falsely) end the album as it originally did on earlier CDs.

"Living in Luxury" is the B-side of a single - (I didn’t know Richard & Linda Thompson had singles). A wonderful little song on its own, it’s just subpar from Shoot Out the Lights standards. A sort of British or Scots march, complete with horn fanfares, it is a nice slice of sarcasm sung in harmony by both of the team. The lyrics extoll the virtues of love over riches:

You don’t need a thing
To live just like a king,
Because loving is living in luxury.

Does love make one’s life luxurious, or is it simply a "luxury," in the sense of superfluity? Perhaps it’s just an excuse . . .

Rocks in my bed and two crusts of bread,
Two crusts of bread ain’t the feast it used to be.
Rocks in my head, but I’ve got love instead,
Because loving is living in luxury.

It’s a lovely slice of lowlife/highlife with a terrific bass line, and it’s nice to have if you’ve got it. But it has nowhere near the urgency of any of the material that makes the album so intense.
It is very difficult to sum up such an extraordinary album as Shoot Out the Lights. Quite obviously the artistic high point for Richard and Linda Thompson, it also signalled the end - nor could it have done any other. But out of the ripping fabrics of their relationship there was weaved this singular masterpiece - their definitive album, both as a couple and as individual artists.

This is the album that would bring Richard Thompson to an international critical recognition from which he has not yet diminished one iota. This, the ending of his partnership with Linda, would also stand as the starting point for his own solo career, which has been going on steadily in its wake for 25 years now.

Through blood and tears, but more importantly, sheer musical inspiration and mastery, Shoot Out the Lights proves itself today, just as essentially as it did upon its release, its vital and necessary place within the core of the canon of rock and roll. It goes even further - it is the fulcrum upon which the entire works of Richard Thompson balance, that essential validation of his entire career, with his odd and unique approach to songwriting. It is, quite simply, the album that makes Richard Thompson matter so vitally to the music of the late 20th and early 21st century.

From here, Thompson would go on to write many, many more great songs, and record over a dozen magnificent albums of new material. And yes, he would subsequently quite often rise to these heights, and in some brief moments, transcend them. But it is from Shoot Out the Lights, this magnificent triumph in marital and existential despair, ultimately, from which Thompson derives his his commanding power and authority, no matter how few records he sells, or how many poor souls don’t know who the hell he is.

In a sense, the long continuation of his career seems almost like an attempt to prove that Shoot Out the Lights was no fluke - he really is that profound of an artist. Ultimately, he strives to live up to unmatchable standards - in both his art and his life - standards that he has created for himself, and in whose message here, in his greatest work, is that to do so is to attempt the impossible.

Therein lies his glory and his most everlasting value.

Video - A Solitary Life, part 5

http://youtube.com/watch?v=kUFeX6wPsng