Whatever the experimentations of Hokey Pokey would have prepared one for in the next Richard and Linda Thompson album, it certainly would not have been this. Pour Down Like Silver at first strikes the listener as much more subdued than anything Thompson has done before. Gone are the wild rants, the instrumental flourishes, the taunting sarcasm. On first listening, Silver presents itself as a relatively straightforward collection of love songs with very simple, even repetitive settings. The melodies, and the singing (especially Linda’s) are quite lovely, but the songs seem to sit there in a kind of passive, unironic, reflective mode that seems quite unlike the Richard Thompson we have come to know.
That is not all that is different about Silver. There is a complete mood and shift of attitude here that seems strikingly sharp. The songs here are almost all seemingly love songs - songs of yearning, songs of hope, songs of devotion. And devotion is indeed the key word here, for Richard and Linda Thompson had, behind the scenes, so to speak, had made a religious conversion to Islamic Sufiism.
That is in itself somewhat of a surprise enough. Up until now, Richard Thompson’s vision, at least expressed in his lyrics, had been pronouncedly un-romantic, cynical - perhaps even nihilistic. Any sense of spirituality previously expressed had been presented eliptically, even ironically, if they had been there at all. In fact, all of Thompson’s love songs themselves had been portraitures of loss, alienation and self deception. That such a profoundly sarcastic bastard as Thompson should suddenly turn and embrace any sort of transcendent vision would have seemed terribly unlikely, to say the least.
But considered in retrospect, this shift in perspective is not as great a turn-around as one might think. Any human being who represents life as bleakly and cynically as Thompson has, must often, on the other hand, be deeply disillusioned by the unmet promises and hypocrisy of existence. In other words, his guise as mocker is essentially a mask for the yearner, the unending seeker after not only truth and validation, but ultimately, for a satisfying ground of being itself.
Whatever Thompson found in the Sufi faith - the great mystical tradition of Islam - it touched a chord deep within him that nothing before had managed to satisfy. And here, on this album, we can hear its results in the artist, and to most striking effect. It is not so much that his conversion has changed him, but rather that it seems to have effectively brought out his other side - his deep, loving, spiritual side - that before had only been able to be observed as in a kind of negative reflection. Whatever wall had broken down for him, there is a newly discovered energy at work here that will provide and sustain a much broader, balanced perspective to his writing and performing, throughout the rest of his career.
Seen in this light, previous songs, especially "A Heart Needs a Home," seem to take on multiple levels of new meaning. Where before, in context of Hokey Pokey, this song could only be interpreted as ironic. Now it can be heard quite differently, as a heartbreakingly aching desire for a restless soul’s wandering. Other very "bleak" portraitures, such as "Has He Got a Friend for Me," and even "Twisted," take on a much larger, existentially poignant resonance as contrasted with an ultimate, transcendent faith, displaying the human condition as more tragic than pathetic, as the individual is seen as basically alienated from his core. The songs that mock ethereal pleasures "Hokey Pokey," "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight," etc., glimmer with a new radiance in the rising light of an infinite, spiritual beneficence.
For it must not be assumed that this religious conversion marks for Thompson a new "either/or" perspective of faithful blindness. Even here, and throughout his subsequent output, Thompson remains the open-eyed realist, and irony is never far from his mind. What has happened, however, is that the irony has deepened and been transformed by a vision of infinite love and acceptance. It is this odd fusion - or perhaps it is not so odd, after all - of idealist and ironist that will feed and sustain the seemingly boundless humanism of Thompson’s art.
But to return to the album at hand, after repeated listenings, Pour Down Like Silver gradually opens itself to deep, heartfelt visions that belie the simplicity of their settings. For these are extraordinarily deep, moving and life-enhancing songs. Whether conceived as songs of human love and devotion, or interpreted as paeans to the infinite God, they ultimately reveal the depth of the individual heart.
There are really no albums I can think of that serve as equivalents to the experience of listening to Pour Down Like Silver. The closest I can come to are Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks or John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. But whereas the former is the portrait of an anguished search, punctuated with a busy jazz bass and spacious strings, and the latter is an impassioned celebration expressed through the boundless power of music to leap past all human boundaries, the Thompsons’ spiritual masterpiece is lean and spare. What connects all three works, however, is a boundless openness that the listener may enter and attach himself to another’s pure vision of the divine.
Briefly spoken, Pour Down Like Silver is quite simply one of the greatest albums of the 1970s. Its singularity and its uncompromising vision may put off some listeners who resist falling under its spell. More is their loss. This is a vital and essential document of the human condition at its most poetically stark and vulnerable. This is a masterpiece.
"Streets of Paradise" - The album kicks off with this hard-hitting, slow electric march with a vocal by Richard that is more chanted than sung. The ambiguity of the point of view holds the listener in a kind of holy spell. For the song is arguably ambiguous in its sincerity, as regards the lyrics, but totally convincing in its sentiment it regards to the music and the vocal performance.
In a sense, "Streets of Paradise" can be compared and contrasted to "When I Get to the Border," the great opening song of I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight. Whereas in the latter case, the singer looks hopefully to a fanciful realm of escape in a prelude to an album of songs detailing total entrapment, this song yearns more for the concrete realization of heavenly transcendence. What makes the song ambiguous is its juxtaposition of its apparent literality with the jarring nature of its imagery. The opening stanza:
The tears fall down like whisky,
The tears fall down like wine
On an island made of cocaine
In a sea of turpentine.
We all need some assistance,
But won’t that day be fine
When we’re walking down the streets of Paradise?
Without an awareness of Thompson’s religious conversion, one would be apt to think the lyrics to be purely ironic, but in a rare way, he seems to be using his rhetorical devices to point to something broader, more meaningful and lasting.
For what is Paradise? From a mystic’s point of view a literal heavenly city is an absurdity. Paradise is the perfect union of the human soul with God, which in essence, is beyond rational comprehension. What are the words that could conjure up that vision, essentially, by nature, ineffable? "Walking down the streets of Paradise" is clearly understood by Thompson as a metaphor for an indescribably transcendent event or state of being. The implication of its use here is indeed a recognition of the inadequacy of language to communicate this experience, just as the mind of man is limited to metaphors of the banality of everyday life.
The lyrics explicitly acknowledge the human being’s limitations in the temporal world, and affirm - though clearly not as absolutes - the efforts of people to attempt to attain a semblance of this purely transcendent vision.
Hence, the opening reference to drugs. Thompson acknowledges what the majority of even drug users fail to realize, which is that the use of such substances are sub-consciously an attempt to re-create or induce this divine, "intoxicated" state. He does not condemn this activity, however, recognizing the limitations of the separated individual, and makes a clear distinction between this and the reality of the experience of self absorbed in the ultimate transcendence of God. That this ultimate transcendence cannot be expressed otherwise than in another (utterly human) limitation of language and imagery that may confound the mind by a literal interpretation of the words, is Thompson’s ultimate concession.
For more than anything else, "The Streets of Paradise," is a passionate song of yearning, a prayer to be lifted up and away from the mundane, as well as a statement of assurance that - somehow, in some way - God will allow this to happen to those who are open to His grace.
The next verse continues, similarly with a portrait of a drunkard:
Tar brush on the corner,
I’ve never seen him before.
He drank ten fingers of what they had,
Now his feet don’t touch the floor.
He can’t see me or this dirty old town,
He’s got nothing to look for.
He’s walking on the streets of Paradise.
This verse explicitly connects with such previous songs as "Twisted," and most specifically, "Down Where the Drunkards Roll." Whereas, in the latter song, the visions of the drunken masses were seen as purely delusional, here they are re-interpreted as transformed into a kind of "halfway house" of spiritual ecstasy and are not to be condemned. (Thompson would later return most definitively to this theme in his great and moving ballad, "God Loves a Drunk" on Rumour & Sigh in 1991.)
The third verse denounces worldly goods and achievements in favor of holy issue. But a doubt begins to creep into the listener’s mind when the singer announces that "I’d trade my little sister" for Paradise. We protest that a human life is sacred and is not a thing to be bargained with. This is a strong hint that the song is sung, not by Thompson, but by a delusional character who is perhaps barking up the wrong mystical tree.
In a sense, this is true, yet it may be not. As Thompson recognizes that the metaphorical "streets" are a way of thinking about the unthinkable, the limitation that the image places on the mind of the singer can just as easily distort his perspective and indeed cause him to miss the point of his entire quest.
The final verse solidifies the singer’s demand for pure coin instead of spiritual substitutes:
I asked you for a racehorse,
Now don’t hand me no mule.
I asked you for a fast car,
Don’t you take me for a fool.
In the end, language always points back to the clear and concrete world of things, and therein lies an inevitable distortion. What exactly is the "authenticity" that the singer seeks so strongly in the song?
Oddly, it is man’s condition, as reflected by the inadequacy of his language, to be forever separated from the perfectly divine, which is what he ultimately seeks. This is, in my interpretation at least, why the song can be seen simultaneously as by Richard Thompson and "not by" Richard Thompson. It is here that he is expressing his own deepest yearnings, while acknowledging his own limitations. Perhaps the secret key that the singer has yet to grasp is that it is in the search for the divine that it is discovered - where it is only partially, if at all, realized.
"Streets of Paradise" is a masterful, powerful introduction to an often painful world of searching. Unlike many other statements of religious conversion, Pour Down Like Silver eschews dogmatism and the usual facile convictions that its spokesman is the possessor of unassailable truth. In contrast, Thompson’s religious vision is thoroughly human, filled with a sense of respectful awe and humility. His compassionate humanism will not allow him to be truly disdainful, as he acknowledges his own (along with everyone else’s) limitations.
It is this attitude and sentiment that make Silver such compelling listening even to doubters. For Thompson seems to insist that doubt is at the absolute essence and core of faith - which it most certainly is to any thoughtfully honest person.
"Streets of Paradise" is an incomparably beautiful song. Simple, straightforward in its construction, yet bold in its presentation, it hovers somewhere between the traditional folk rock that is Thompson’s chief metier (gorgeously adorned throughout by John Kirkpatrick’s delectable concertina) and a desert chant towards Mecca. On the simple, yet gut-wrenching refrain, Richard is joined by Linda, making this work a tandem statement.
On the front cover of the album, Richard appears in a simple close-up shot wearing a turban. Linda, on the back cover, smiles simply with the devotional headpiece and scarf of the traditional Islamic world. This is a metamorphosis that they have entered into together, and this will be unquestionably a "Richard and Linda Thompson" album in more ways than one.
But despite these clear-cut images, any path involving Richard Thompson is not going to be straight and simple, as the majestic "Streets of Paradise" pointedly make clear at the outset.
"For Shame of Doing Wrong" - The second song is given over to Linda, and it is quickly another classic of infinite simplicity and beauty. Backed with only electric guitar, concertina, bass and drums, Linda chants a litany of regret for leaving her lover. Is it her husband? Is it her God? There is, within the Sufi song tradition, a practice of composing love odes which have as their ultimate reference, the divine, rather than the human. Is this the case here? Though the song can certainly be read that way, its power does not lie on its subject, but with the emotional realm of the singer.
The regret and shame of faithlessness come back to haunt the ex-lover who sings of her emptiness and desire to be re-united with her love. For in rejecting that in whom she had been bonded, she has done the most violence to her own soul, and is now cast adrift.
The remarkably poignant refrain is purely Thompsonian in its seeming contradictions: "I wish I was a fool for you again." Here, a "fool" can be interpreted in just as many ways that the word "fool" suggests. And if one is a "fool," in a negative sense, the desire for that condition is an explicit recognition that there is a compensatory reward that far outweighs "foolishness." Here, it is, ironically, in the loss of self that the individual finds her true meaning and ultimate completion.
There is a definite sense of responsibility in this context of the definition of love. Could love be love without it? If love is ultimately conditional, is it really love at all, in the truest sense? Were love a mere choice or preference, one would not "hang my head in shame for doing wrong." The singer accuses herself of being a "restless thief," one that placed her passion and commitment somewhere other than its rightful place, be it in a man or in God. Love comes with a moral imperative that is, to some degree, self-negating.
There is a hope of reconciliation, however. As the singer prays to her beloved:
Please don’t make me pay for my deceiving heart,
Just turn up your lamp and let me in.
This certainly sounds like a repentant sinner returning to a faithful, loving God. But it also reminds one of a contrite wanderer in a country & western ballad. The phrase "deceiving heart" can’t help but conjure up thoughts of Hank Williams’ "Cheating Heart," and reminds us that in that tradition, as well as in the more exotic world of the Sufi, the sentiment is precisely the same thing.
Linda sings the line, "I wish I was a fool for you again," over and over, as if it was mystical Koranic chant, while Richard repeats her words antiphonally, until the song fades into the distance. Is the reconciliation actually accomplished? We do not know. We only know that it is prayed for with a contrite and sincere heart, and we hope that somehow the plea will be answered.
Now, if there is intended irony in this song, I fail to see it. That there is a biographical irony is certain, as in so many other songs by this pair of real and earthly lovers. We will inevitably encounter that as the story of Richard and Linda Thompson reaches its powerful climax. Let us only note here that these are the words here of a human being - a fallible human being who confesses in his own language that he cannot achieve the ideal. Let us rest with that thought for now and not let it trouble us further in examining the remainder of the album.
Video - Richard & Linda Thompson: "For Shame of Doing Wrong"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=2cM6gez2-Uc
The Poor Boy Is Taken Away" - Here is another acoustic song in very slowly, stately tempo, this one a dirge-like waltz. This aching, empty song of loss is sung very simply, deeply and beautifully by Linda, to the accompaniment of Richard on guitar and mandolin.
The narrative is one of loss, ostensibly for a dead lover. I presume he has died, given that he has been "taken away." Of course, he could have been stolen by another woman, but the fact that he is referred to as "the poor boy" makes this unlikely.
At any rate, the song is one of utter desolation and loss ("The world has no comfort to bring.") Memories are insufficient, and there is no offer of possible consolation with another love. This is one of Thompson’s best efforts purely in the style of an old English ballad.
Keeping in mind of the theme of the album, however, where a sense of loss is appropriate as the counterpoint to mystical union, "The Poor Boy," simply interpreted, is thematically relevant and adds poignancy to the record as a whole.
One might argue, however, that the song could be interpreted as being seen from the perspective of God, who is saddened and disconsolate at the losing of an earthly soul from His love. That such a person, turning away from the divine, could be utterly "lost" without his primal connection is a very interesting and deeply felt perspective - and certainly not one that is heard very often, even in liturgical music.
Considered in this sense, there is certainly a new depth added to the spirituality of the album. In Sufi tradition, God is seen as analogous to a lover. That God should feel the loss as powerfully, if not more, than the lover is presumed in a good deal of Sufi poetry. Interpreted this way, "The Poor Boy" makes a beautiful counterpart to the preceding perspective of the repentant lover in "For Shame of Doing Wrong."
However one prefers to interpret it, "The Poor Boy Is Taken Away" is a sweetly melancholy addition to the lineup of songs on Pour Down Like Silver, deepening and sustaining the mood in a very subtle, yet powerful way.
"Night Comes In" - This, the centerpiece of the album, is a fearless, slow-droning chant of love. What could be a tiresome, repetitive excursion is transformed, in a powerfully hypnotic performance by Richard into a wholly convincing, moving, and finally, fully transcendent hymn of divine love.
There is an oddly ominous quality to the song - just as in "Calvary Cross," the chords, set in a minor mode, repeat endlessly, but to quite different effect. Whereas on the previous song, we found a musical depiction of hell, here we have quite the reverse. If this is not heaven, it is the sound of the soul’s yearning for it.
Richard starts with unadorned electric guitar, running patient, simple lines that simultaneously seduce and strike a kind of hushed awe in the listener. He is soon joined by bass guitar, and when his vocal finally enters, it is a stark and naked thing - humbled and humbling and downright chilling in their authentic call for grace:
Night comes in
Like some cool river,
How can there be another day?
Take my hand,
Oh, real companion,
And we’ll dance,
Dance ‘til we fade away.
Sufi dancing is a mystical tradition in which the spirit of God enters the petitioner’s body, and they unite and become one in an ecstasy of joy. The dance is not done for God, but with God, as the two dissolve and become one. The music itself becomes divine - the "songs pour down like silver." In the middle of the second verse, a slow, simple drumbeat is added which, given its long delay, pushes the song forward, effortlessly into an entirely new realm of movement and revelation.
Finally, and quite unexpectedly, the chords change into the chorus, where Richard, joined now by Linda, passionately intones:
Dancing ‘til my feet don’t touch the ground,
I lose my mind and dance forever,
Lose my mind and dance forever,
Turn my world around,
Turn my world around.
Rarely has this kind of simplicity been so artfully employed to build to this kind of ecstatic release. As the pair sings, the electrified music vibrates along with them, and the listener is carried into another realm. No matter what one’s perspective on religion, one cannot help but feel the intensity of Thompson’s passion, and the listener is taken up, away with him into an almost purely transcendent realm.
I say this, knowing full well that some listeners may remain unmoved by what I find one of the most extraordinarily passionate moments in rock music. But many fail to be swept away by such intense declarations as The Who’s "Bargain," or the self-destroying, all-absorbing power of the repeated choruses that end "Hey Jude." What can I say? When all is said and done, transcendence is a very personal affair. All a loving listener can do is to point out that it is there for those who can perceive it.
Is it not then, everywhere? In a sense, yes. But it takes a special kind of sensitivity to life to be able to transform all of the mundane world into a spiritual experience, a sensitivity that can only come to the most gifted, or to those who have been most inwardly transformed by some sort of inner revelation. For the rest of us, many of us can find it here, specifically in musical/emotional moments like these, where our minds and hearts are led by great artistry, taken to a point far away from the ordinary, and lead us to a point in the wilderness where the rest of the world hushes as we can listen to the eternal within our lives, and within ourselves.
That Richard Thompson can achieve such a moment here is testimony not only to his greatness as an artist, but to the possibility of shared insights between human beings. It is often said that a mystical experience cannot be communicated. Music consistently proves this adage patently untrue. For in the words of Frank Zappa, "Music is the only religion that really delivers the goods."
Finally, in the end, it is not what is being communicated, in terms of its content. It really matters not if a listener shares Richard Thompson’s convictions about God. What ultimately matters is that whatever unique connection is made between artist and listener is made at all. In the end, the content is finally inexpressible. It can only be felt and understood in the content of itself.
Fascinatingly, this is exactly what "Night Comes In" is about. It is a song about the entry of this spirit into the willing participant, and in so describing the effect, the song almost magically produces the result in transmission of its concept. This is the very definition of the "holy song" - the hymn, the chant, the resolute, impassioned thrall of the pounding of the village drums. It’s all here.
Finally, the words give out, and Thompson rides out the rest of the way on his beautiful electric guitar lines. But, virtuoso though he is, he does not show off, but holds his restraint, in keeping with the holy conjuring of the piece, holds his ego in abatement, producing beauty without showing off.
We reach a climactic moment, where the beat goes into double time, Thompson adds a second electric guitar, almost imperceptibly, and the two identical instruments take up a kind of dance with one another, emulating the dance of the lover and his beloved, the faithful petitioner and his God.
This instrumental extension - I would not call it a coda, for it is a natural part and parcel of the song itself - goes on for several minutes, until it becomes gradually more soft, quiet and subdued, like two lovers in the afterglow. And then, very simply, it ends, as does the first side of the album, in a reflected light of silent peace.
When all’s said and done, "Night Comes In" is, regardless of religious perspective, one of the most passionate songs of love ever put down on vinyl. And in those wonderful days of long-playing records, it quite definitively ends side one.
"Jet Plane in a Rocking Chair" - Side two begins with this rollicking little number harmonized entirely by both Richard and Linda. Returning to a more basic British folk-rock feel, Jet Plane capers nimbly with fiddle accompaniment. It is yet another love song that is basically directed to God. As the title suggests, and the rest of the lyrics illustrate, the singers are turning their backs on false claimants for the "real" object of devotional love.
Interestingly, while the lyrics speak of the denial of false promises, one can quite easily re-interpret the images as metaphors for achievement of transcendence through the mundane. If one’s heart is truly changed, as proclaimed in the song, one could, indeed, ride a jet plane in a rocking chair. But that does not seem to be the song’s intent, as Verse 4 proclaims, "I’m a fool with a size one head."
The notion is reinforced with the chorus, so beautifully and simply sung:
Here comes the real thing
I’ve been waiting for so long,
For so long
I’ve been waiting for a love like you.
Ultimately, the song proves un-complex, which is a bit of a pity, as Richard Thompson’s spirituality would later prove so broad and inclusive of human experience. But here there is the suggestion of the orthodox valuation of a true choice set against a false one.
I suppose that he could perform this song today, however, with overtones of a broader palate of comprehension - for in recognition of the source of transcendent love, God, and informed with this knowledge, all types of mundane human adventures could be validated through their investiture of their source.
The song could be heard ironically as well, as could many of these songs, as I’m realizing. If the singer(s) has become so enamoured of the source of life and love that he can miss the Blakean adventure of a "Sea cruise in a diving bell," or could not "Run a mile in a wishing well," perhaps he is missing the gifts that life truly has to offer.
However one wishes to take the song, it seems to work best, quite straight-forwardly, with its humble, glowing sense of simple joy - a joy that is all to often absent from Thompson’s world perspective, and serves so effectively here as a content respite from the extremes of even his devotional music.
It’s really a lovely, pretty song, and seemingly heartfelt. It’s short, to the point, and is probably best enjoyed for exactly what it seems to be - a happy little personal hymn. (After all, this isn’t "Wall of Death," even though the roller coaster "rolls nowhere.")
"Beat the Retreat" - This, the simplest of songs on the album, feels like its emotional climax. Basically three acoustic guitar chords, played quite slowly, to the accompaniment of what is basically an unadorned chant, there are no doubt listeners who will find "Beat the Retreat" tedious and pointless. Like much of the album, this song will cause divisions. But I find the simple repetition to be essential to the song’s power. This calm exclamation of surrender suggests the soul at absolute peace, and the martial movement of the beat, combined with Richard’s heartfelt commitment to his beautiful, sparse melody, makes this one of the most moving pieces in his entire repertoire.
It is, indeed, another love song, and once again the lover can be seen as God. Or not - one of the nice things about the songs on Silver is their lack of insistence upon their subject. One can take the content as far as one chooses, and apply it to whatever degree one can about a love object, be it human or divine - or as with with the other songs on the album, ultimately both.
Richard plays an open-tuned 12-string guitar, to the accompaniment of bass and flute. As in "Night Comes In," the drum enters here in the second verse, but driving the song with more allusory suggestiveness, as the weary, defeated soldier marches back home to his lover. His resignation, however, is not sad, but joyous:
I’ll follow the drum
Back home to you.
I’ll follow the drum
Back home to you.
There was no sense in my leaving.
There was no sense in my leaving.
There was no sense in my leaving.
I’m running back home to you.
I feel nothing but pity for those who cannot share in the deep, hopeful humble march of this joyous retreat. Its earnestness and simple acknowledgement of human limitation is one of the most sublimely real moments ever put to record - a moment that we can all share, whatever our conviction of religious or metaphysical truth. It is a great moment of the human heart, that personal acknowledgement that "a heart needs a home."
"Hard Luck Stories" - After all the faithful devotion and emotional regret, this harsh little scolding seems to have dropped out of the sky, accidently falling into this album from a completely different record.
A sly combination of Brit-folk and country & western, snidely sung by Linda, it is vicious little diatribe against an annoying person, essentially telling them to bugger off.
In Richard Thompson’s abrupt return to darkly comic wordplay, we get treated to a nasty diatribe:
They say running into you is like running into trouble,
You bend my ear and I see double,
You’re everybody’s idea of a waste of time.
You still come around ‘cos I used to listen,
But I run a steamship, I don’t run a mission,
Don’t be mistaken in thinking you’re a friend of mine.
Those hard luck stories,
It’s all I ever get from you . . .
Like so many other of Thompson’s songs of personal disdain, the humor and intensity of the vituperative undermines the effectiveness of the dressing down, and the words are thrown back on the singer, revealing him (or her, in this case) to being an insensitive asshole.
No doubt that we all have acquaintances whose "poor me" discourses make us want to drive them out of our sights, but this snarly lack of empathy is so particularly nasty that it cannot be taken seriously, can it?
Richard’s electric guitar solo uses slides effectively to make mock tears and taunt the poor subject of the song. The verbal attack is simply relentless - it just never lets up, and finally it becomes universalized:
Why don’t you grow up, why don’t you settle down,
Why don’t you get a job, why don’t you leave town?
Even a chicken has to do what it has to do.
You don’t like one thing, you don’t like another,
You don’t like anything that looks like bother,
Everybody don’t like something, and we all don’t like you.
The effect of this hilarious assault may indeed hit the mark for some, but something in us tells us that the song simply goes too far. If we identify with the singer, as we are likely to do, since we’d rather be on the giving than the receiving end of this one, even though the song is funny, and may hold some truth for us, we don’t like going quite this far - the fear of being a total jerk alienates us from the singer’s position. Now turn the perspectives around. The song is addressed to the listener, after all, and as such, we’ve got to immediately object. How does it feel to have one’s faults taken and amplified to such a pitch that one is the object of the entire world’s derision? Not very good, does it?
This is one of Thompson’s double-edged songs in which we can simply find no peaceful resting point. And for some reason, its apparently unwieldily inclusion in this suite of faith and love not only provides a relief-filled respite from the sonorous intonations of the rest of the album, but provides a much-charged register of suggestion from its realm of the opposite.
Somehow, "Hear Luck Stories" help makes the picture complete. In a world full of human disdain and highly contingent relationships, it throws the helplessness and "alone-ness" of the individual into strikingly high relief. Shown what the stakes truly are, the stirring ending of the album, which is just about to come, can be felt with much more poignancy and empathy.
"Hard Luck Stories" is exactly the right song to come along right in the nick of time before Pour Down Like Silver reaches for its shimmering, heartfelt conclusion.
"Dimming of the Day" / "Dargai" - Linda sings this plaintive, elegiac hymn of love with such an open, beautiful voice as to bring tears to the hardest of hearts. Such an honest confession of the need to be loved, the need to be known and accepted is a worthy tribute of a pure heart longing for either earthly lover or transcendent God.
With simple, open-tuned acoustic guitar and light banjo picking for accompaniment, Linda opens up her heart through Richard’s gorgeously simple melody and lyrics:
This old house is falling down around my ears,
I’m drowning in the river of my tears.
When all my will is gone you hold the sway,
I need you at the dimming of the day.
The Brit-folk feel of this simple ballad gives it a timeless quality - nothing about it seems forced or contrived. This has to be one of the starkest, most beautiful love songs ever put down on record.
The theme of past inconstancy returns, but is dismissed quickly. The singer’s need is urged in terms as elegantly equivalent to nature’s designs ("You pulled me like the moon pulls on the tide"). And it is in the finality of night and rest where need is most fully realized. At the end of a day, or at the end of a life, the seeker must find rest with her beloved. Together, alone in the dark, they are as one.
Video - Richard & Linda Thompson: "Dimming of the Day"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4j_RBpvDqw&NR=1
Immediately, after the song concludes, Richard picks up its continuation on his spare acoustic guitar, both in answer and in fulfillment of Linda’s pleas. "Dargai," an instrumental credited to J. Scott Skinner (and arranged by Thompson), effectively serves as a meditational finale to "Dimming." There is no break, and the two meld into one, as lovers entwined slip silently into one another’s spirits as in dreams.
Although I do not know the source and purpose of this tune, "Dargai" is the name of a mountain peak in Pakistan. On October 20, 1897, George Findlater, a 25-year-old piper in the British army, played as his regiment advanced an assault on the mountain. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "at the front of the charge Piper Findlanter was shot twice, and his pipes were partially shot away also. But he continued playing until losing consciousness." He survived, and his company won the day.
What made Thompson select this particular ode to the musical/military tenacity of this young piper as a conclusion to this album is unclear. Perhaps it set in his mind as a metaphor of constancy, even in the face of death and disaster. Of course it is just as possible that the tune was chosen simply for its plaintive melody.
At any event, "Dargai" eloquently serves as a beautiful coda to an album of romantic and devotional surrender. Elegantly plucked in open tuning, the simple ballad features lovely flourishes from Richard which are never showy or detract from the simplicity of the song, but rather enhance its sense of serenity.
If "Dargai" is a recognizably English folk tune, it is also played with a slight sense of Eastern exoticism that suggests meditational devotion. In its pauses and silences, its slow forward motion, its gentle, unforced trills and ornaments, one can feel the peaceful majesty of the setting sun. "Dargai" is a fulfillment, a communion made with a self joined at peace forever with another spirit.
Even in the unheralded world of Richard Thompson, Pour Down Like Silver stands alone as a shimmering, beautiful, unknown masterpiece. Those canny enough to know and love I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight and Shoot Out the Lights need desperately to add this stark, mystical vision to their music collection today.
Bonus Tracks
Island’s 2004 CD re-release includes a bounty of extra tracks that feature live versions of several of Pour Down Like Silver’s songs, giving them an added dimension and power.
"Streets of Paradise" - This version goes back to the Roundhouse performance on September 7, 1975 that was featured on the Bright Lights and Hokey Pokey re-releases. Huge, stately and ominous, this is a magnificently fresh recording of this classic song, featuring the beautiful ornamentations of John Kirkpatrick, as well as one of Richard’s most impassioned vocals recorded to date.
Revisiting this song, it has resonances that vibrate far beyond my original interpretations, and the more I listen to it, the more ambiguous it becomes. If I had not known of the Thompson’s conversion to Sufiism and heard this song afresh in the context of Richard’s previous work, it would appear to me to be wholly delusional and cynical. This is the very crux of Richard Thompson - the idealistic misanthrope caught between two worlds, the cynical and the divine. It is a dichotomy that defines the man as an artist, and it will ever remain the great source of tension within his songs that will continually drive him to produce his greatest works.
"Night Comes In" - This live version of "Night Comes In" is most welcome, as it was originally released on the now-deleted (guitar, vocal) compilation album (1976). Clocking in at over 12 minutes, Richard pours his soul into two separate, searing, searching guitar solos that define his heart more than display his technique (though there is technique aplenty). Just an absolutely essential addition to what is already a magnificent disc. Recorded November 27, 1975 at Oxford Polytechnic.
"Dark End of the Street" - This song, also previously available only on (guitar, vocal), was recorded live at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, on April 25, 1975. This song of hiding adultery was written by Dan Penn and Chips Moman, which became a soul hit in 1967 for vocalist James Carr. It has been recorded many times since, notably as a country duet by Archie Campbell and Lorene Mann (and later by Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner.)
The universality of the song is captured in this close, intimate acoustic performance, sung with great sensitive understatement by Linda, with Richard on guitar and backing vocals on the chorus, completing the picture of the love-doomed cheating duo. Magnificently haunting, the Thompsons display once again a thorough understanding of their musical sources, bringing incredible drama and pathos to this ballad. Richard’s guitar is very simple strumming, until a solo section allows him to deftly display his remarkably imaginative, versatile finger-picking style. This is a perfect place to mount this remarkable gem.
"Beat the Retreat" - Recorded the same night and place as the previous song, this version is previously unreleased. Starkly performed solo by Richard, with just his acoustic guitar, this simple hymn for deliverance relies entirely on the soulful conviction of the singer’s shaky voice and his absolute trust that the urgings of his soul will resonate with his audience. It does, and it is the perfect way to end this expanded edition of the album.
Unlike many other releases with bonus cuts, these do not seem tacked on after the fact, divorced from their main material. Manifestations of the same spirit that created this superb album, recorded at the same time, they are a welcome addendum that plays perfectly into the original record proper. All taken, Pour Down Like Silver in this format, is a timeless listening experience of a kind that is quite different to match anywhere, and finds Richard and Linda Thompson (temporarily, at least) in loving harmony and peace, perfectly united and reflecting the peaceful love of the rays of eternal bliss.
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