Daring Adventures

Richard Thompson: Daring Adventures [June 1986]

I feel I have to add a personal parenthetical note about each of Richard Thompson’s solo albums (from Hand of Kindness on), to the effect that at the time of each one’s release, it was a regular part of my daily life and experience. Each one has its own rich set of associations with where I was and what I was doing at the time. All of these albums (along with many others, of course) were quite important to me, and each bears its own particular feel that is attached to memory.

That being said, I have to admit, that new releases tend to supplant old ones in my attention zone, and there are many of these discs that I have not listened to for quite some time now. I "discovered" Richard Thompson with Shoot Out the Lights, which has maintained a kind of permanent standard in my listening habits ever since. While, in the course of this project, I was listening freshly to the Fairport Convention albums, as well as the 1970s Richard & Linda Thompson releases that were new to me, there was inevitably an exciting sense of revelation - of new discoveries deferred.

In the case of the post-SOTL recordings, however, I am experiencing a "re-discovery," and it is proving to be revelatory in a different kind of way. With vantage from both sides of the time spectrum, the music plays itself differently for me. Many things I have forgotten - much of the others are now heard in a fresh context. There have already been many surprises for me, and no doubt I will encounter some puzzlements as well.

This was certainly the case with my fresh listening of Daring Adventures from 1986. I remember loving this album, along with its feel at the time, but after the first time through - on this voyage - I was disappointed. The album simply did not seem to hold up for me in any way or degree of intensity with the albums that came before it, particularly in comparison to its predecessor, Across a Crowded Room.

Wanting to be as fair as possible to the material, I decided to allow some time to pass before returning to it, so that I would not rush into any harshly formed judgements. I’m glad that I did, for Daring Adventures took some warming up to in the wake of what I had been listening to, along with my anxious expectations.

On first listening, I found most of the album dull and uninspired. Now, after longer and closer examination, I am more comfortable with it, though I do find it to be a kind of "transitional" album in Thompson’s career, and its imperfections are natural reflections of the necessary re-alignment and refinement of Thompson’s style and songwriting.

This is only natural, after all. Perhaps the most important singular important thing about Daring Adventures is, after all, that it is pointedly not Hand of Kindness or Across a Crowded Room. That is to say, Thompson seemed determined to stop making sequels to Shoot Out the Lights and to get on with his life and career. One can only maintain a reaction to a life crisis for so long without becoming pathologically obsessed and repetitiously boring.

That’s not to say that Daring Adventures does not carry any morose overtones about love - it certainly does. But in this case, those songs ("Missy How You Let Me Down," "Long Dead Love," "Lover’s Lane," and "Nearly in Love") seemed to be formed more distantly, in a more abstract, less personal way. These songs are more about craftsmanship rather than the release of personal angst, which truly is, it must be admitted, a more difficult thing to pull off effectively.

This is not to imply that these songs are any less "real" than Thompson’s previous songs - they do indeed carry the content of his character and perspective with tremendous conviction and honesty. It simply means that as a writer, Thompson was now having to return to writing from a more imaginative, less immediately personal perspective. And at this point, I have to say, that sometimes the work suffers - it labors in the transition.

On the other hand, Thompson here introduces (or should we say "re-introduces") newly narrative-type songs that will become more and more commonplace for him - and that these songs are by far the most interesting and successful on the album. Indeed, the album ends with one of Thompson’s unquestionably great accomplishments - "Al Boylly’s in Heaven," an imaginative narrative in an experimental form that stands easily alongside any of his work in wit, pathos, and finally, in emotional catharsis. Indeed, Daring Adventures is so dominated by the power of this song that in my mind, I almost see them as equivalents. And if the rest of the album does no match up to the power of this masterpiece, that is not really a great fault.

For these songs are daring adventures after all - they are each a personal excursion by Richard Thompson into attempting to stretch and grow - to pull away from the baggage of his past, while at the same time attempting to achieve something like the power of discovery that marks the uniqueness of his artistry. The album is indeed a self-challenge, and one that will soon begin to pay off huge dividends on subsequent releases.

So my criticism is tempered by this realization, and I can enjoy this album for what it is, rather than damning it with faint praise for what it is not. And with "Al Bowlly’s in Heaven," we already have the first full fruits of the labor in hand. Yes, the song is that good, and it - along with a few other delightful "adventures" - are reason enough for any Thompson fan to deem the album critical to his canon, and well worth possessing.

Daring Adventures would be Thompson’s second (and final) release on Polydor, and more importantly, his first in a series of collaborations with studio whiz-kid producer Mitchell Froom. At this point, Froom was most notable for his work with the lush recordings of the Australian pop group Crowded House, and beginning with Thompson, Suzanne Vega and the L.A. roots band Los Lobos, would soon begin crafting unique sonic soundscapes that some fans felt were foreign to Thompson’s style. I believe the collaboration holds up very well on these works, however. Froom is interested in establishing certain textures that match up well to the environment of a song, and not overwhelming them. From my listening perspective, Froom’s keyboard-rich, lush sonic pallet enervates and keeps current Thompson’s songs, while providing them with the necessary punch to retain the immediacy that his performance deserves.

No doubt that there will always be small factions of disagreement among Thompson’s followers about whether Froom was a good match for Thompson, but after surveying the results of their work together over five albums - including some of the finest work of Thompson’s career - I belive the point is now moot.

Richard Thompson albums are about the songs, not the sound. And on all of these albums, there are very many wonderful songs indeed. And yes, they sound good. What more could any listener reasonably ask for? Accept the daring along with the adventures, and you will not be disappointed.

"A Bone Through Her Nose" - Daring Adventures begins more than promisingly with this hilariously savage broadside. This is Richard Thompson at his hardest rocking, his snidest and perhaps most affectionately best. Moreover, "A Bone Through Her Nose" represents a shift both in sound and subject matter that makes it sound like a genuine advance - in direction, if not quality - from his most recent recordings.

Taking a cue from the outraged confusion of "Little Blue Number," this song is a singularly charged diatribe of the follies of a young lady’s forms and fashions in the context of the increasingly ridiculous parade of societal fads. In the face of the post-modern malaise that demands extremes of expression, but without any intelligible social context - a situation that still lingers among many youth today. "A Bone Through Her Nose" is a wonderfully precise portrait of the hopeless attempts of the young to escape the oblivion of conformity in a commodified world that has already pre-empted the very concept of "cool."

How Thompson succeeds without falling into old-fogeyism is through the sheer power of his state-of-the-art electronic attack, combined with his witty words and the ferocity of his singing, which maintains a purely natural, careful edge between exaggerated outrage and "in-the-know" humor.

The song kicks the album immediately into high gear with the playing of a sarcastic little riff on electric keyboards that is reminiscent both of a taunt and a satire on a vaguely Oriental sense of exoticism. Stated right at the beginning, then returning to answer every phrase in the verse, It’s particularly nasty and fun - inspired snottiness.

Thompson and Froom give plenty of time and space to settle into the tough-hearted groove of guitar, bass and drums before the lyrics kick in. This is, indeed, one of the keys to the song’s effectiveness - by establishing itself right at the outset as the equal to any of the hardest and most skilfully crafted rock music, "A Bone Through Her Nose" seizes its authority to judge its subjects by effectively out-pacing them. This 35-year-old folk-rocker is not going to blanch at being culturally outmoded, and he out-mock-rocks his younger contemporaries effortlessly, stealing their sonic thunder with a greater wallop than they could hope to muster. In short, the song is a middle-aged-man’s coup - a tour de force of maniacal post-punk power that shrivels its contemporaries’ pretensions.

There is also authority in Thompson’s vocal delivery that matches his sense of outraged sarcasm. At the beginning of the story, our heroine is in a free-fall state of fashion grace, and adjustments must be made:

Oh, the drones on the corner don’t look her in the eye when she comes out to play.
And three times now at the Club Chi-Chi, they’ve turned her away.
Last week she was the belle of the ball, but another week passes.
It’s time to cast off crutches, scars and pebble glasses.

A buzzsaw guitar changes the chords that begin the refrain that leads into the chorus:

She’s got everything a girl might need,
She’s a tribal animal, yes indeed . . .

Tribalism is the key word here. Archeologically speaking, it is a most helpful definition that puts the young girl’s fashion dilemma into perspective. With just a change of outfits, one can change social sets, and thus adhere, belong. But it if it is nothing more than that, of course it is a hollow adherence to an aggregate group in which individuality, ironically, is subsumed in the colors of the "tribe." Through such a metaphor, modern, or even "post-modern" quandaries can be seen as thoroughly primitive as any kind of human behavior can be.

The chorus brings the defining edge of this fashion-mongering, homo sapien adaption mechanism to its logical conclusion. Try as she might, she has not quite reached the fullness of primitivist behavior, because, as Thompson slyly observes:

But she hasn’t got a bone through her nose, through her nose,
Hasn’t got a bone through her nose . . .

Indeed, that’s all that is missing to make the atavistic transference complete. Thompson repeats the chorus like a primal chant, driven by the relentlessness of savage drumbeats that pound in point like the height of ritual jungle ceremony. Setting a marvelous counterpoint to this is the sophisticatedly unexpected downward modulations of the chorus’ melody and harmony. The song hits its target quick, hard and sticks.

The second verse catches up to our young lady and her current fashion habits:

Oh, she gets her suits from a personal friend, Coco the Clown.
She’s got dustman’s jacket, inside out, it’s a party gown.
If it’s bouffons, she’s got bouffons, if it’s tit she got tat.
She’s got hoochie-coochie Gucci (whoo!) and a pom-pom hat.

Thompson’s verbal wordplay is thrillingly funny, matching Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan in wit and invention, but with his own personal flair.

Thompson thwaks his Stratocaster mercilessly in a hardcore rhythmic holding pattern before breaking out into a run of staccatto lines that dance on the edge of the beat, like flames around cannibal’s boiling pot. Froom’s pseudo-exotic synthesizer picks up the lines of an imaginary melody that leads back to the third, and final verse:

Well, her ma writes cook books, she wrote one once, and it sold one or two.
Her pa’s in the city, he’s so witty, he calls it "the zoo."
Her boyfriend plays in Scrutti Polutti, Aunt Sally’s brown bread.
In a few more years she can marry some fool and knock it on the head.

The mocking reference in the third line refers to Scritti Politti, a British post-punk band that had moved to a synth-based kind of power pop which had proved a sensation the year before with their top-selling album, Cupid & Psyche 85. Thompson "pollutes" their name, perhaps in the same manner as the band had "polluted" its radical vision for a more commercial, manneristic style. Not knowing quite what Thompson thought of their music, the inclusion of this reference point still helps to tie down the milieu to which our heroine is tied.

However, the problem is not tied to this historical cultural moment, given the girl’s vacuous family background. And the concluding line attests to a future in which her vapidities will be perpetuated even further down the generational line.

Thompson repeats the chorus again, finally giving out his chant and picking up a taunting, sliding guitar line, which gradually gives way in the fade to the sound of human voices childishly intoning, "Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah . . ." The song thus ends in utter disdain.

So we come finally to the question of the point of this manic little diatribe. Aside from the obvious critical attacks, we know Richard Thompson to be a sensitive individual (though certainly a sarcastic one), and one is loathe to simply leave the interpretation at that. Of course, at its core, "A Bone Through Her Nose" has a negative subject matter, which is indeed the absence of a fully developed human personality, complete with the intellectual and emotional grounds for confident self carriage.

This is nothing new in Thompson’s writing repertoire, but "A Bone Through Her Nose" is certainly a stylistic breakthrough, and one that more than adequately demonstrates his tremendous power to remain alertly relevant - indeed, within the context of the contemporary music scene, he appears here, as later, to be a "cutting edge" performer, and a worthy companion to such younger College Radio staples as R.E.M., Talking Heads, the Smiths and his quirky American counterpart, Tom Waits.

This seems to be an odd key to Thompson’s cultural position as a cult icon. Absorbed in "adventurous" popular music from the very beginning of his career, his unique modern vision, tied as it is to the conservative perspective of the folk singer, lends him a strange combination: the traditionalist modernist. The ever-living crank, "Henry the Human Fly" is buzzing about in a new setting, and it is in a place that is just as absurd as it always was - indeed, will always be.

"A Bone Through Her Nose" is as exciting and catching beginning to an album of the period as could be imagined. (Note: I saw Thompson and his band perform this curio live in September 2007, and it had lost none of its good-natured savageness, sounding surprisingly relevant and fresh.)

"Valerie" - The mood established, Thompson sustains it - even attempts to pump it up - with this fast-rocking crazed portrait of a girlfriend who is making the singer crazy himself. "Valerie" is the true successor to "Little Blue Number," in its "Too Much Monkey Business" virtuosity of insanities. In tempo and tone, the song more resembles "Tear Stained Letter" in its Jambalaya footstomping fun, but it fails to live up to (or even attempt) to reach that brilliant song’s ability to turn horror into a joke - and vice versa.

"Valerie"’s litany of challenges to her lover/author can either be seen as funny or tedious, depending upon one’s disposition. I tend to enjoy it, and it features a particularly hilarious, nervous-breakdown guitar solo towards the end. The lyrics are clever, but they’re really not worth repeating here - there is wit, but no real savagery of insight, especially compared with "Bone Through Her Nose."

This is not particularly a criticism. "Valerie" is a good-time, silly rave-up that can be especially enjoyed in a live performance. But it’s not pushing Thompson into any new direction. Instead, he begins to sound like he’s repeating himself here - and other places on this album. We can see that at this point, the artist is attempting to shake the personal debris away from his work, and needing a subject matter, begins turning to portraiture - or in this case, caricature.

The Richard Thompson of Henry the Human Fly and I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight never seemed to suffer from lack of inspiration through observation. Dwelling too long in the shadows of his own emotional ecstasies and nightmares, the transition back to more objective songwriting seems a little elusive here. But it will not remain that way for long.

Video - Richard Thompson performs "Valerie" (solo, acoustic)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EGhHbJo7PCE

"Missie How You Let Me Down" - Next comes what by now is seeming an obligatory "bad love song." This man seems out of pain and out of guilt by now - one never asks if this Celtic-tinged lament is addressed to Linda or not. It’s clearly a formula song. Once again, this is not to be too critical. "Missie How You Let Me Down," is a perfectly realized dirge of sadness and regret, and it sounds beautiful. There is a peculiar soulfulness to the number that makes it an especially enjoyable listen, and Thompson puts the lyrics across with professional conviction.

I find it difficult to castigate or dismiss songs like this, as coming from anyone else, I should probably find them rapturous. Indeed, I think if I had never heard Richard Thompson before and listened to this album, I would instantly fall in love with this and many other songs. Sometimes it’s difficult when you have set so high a standard. (Just ask Bob Dylan.)

"Dead Man’s Handle" - I do not own a copy or am familiar with First Light or Sunnyvista, both of which have less than sterling reputations. So for me, I have to say (with that qualification) that this is Thompson’s least-inspired, dullest song so far - a real dud.
Using train metaphors again (e.g., "Fire in the Engine Room"), "Dead Man’s Handle" is a cautionary tale that completely fails to engage the emotions in any way whatsoever. The worst thing about the song, however, is that its structure and feel are practically a carbon copy of "Wall of Death," arguably Thompson’s greatest single achievement. This is certainly an argument that inspiration far outweighs technical proficiency in either folk or rock music (or many other arts for that matter.) "Dead Man’s Handle" is quite professionally constructed, but there is no spark of life. It’s just a dead fish of a song.

Once again, you cannot accuse Thompson of not trying here. You can feel commitment is real - the magic just isn’t coming. Not yet, not here.

"Long Dead Love" - My first impression was that this was another confection of love-loss, and if Thompson wanted to shake the overtones of his marriage break up, he should avoid these. (Let’s just say that it’s not exactly "Love in a Faithless Country.") But listening through it again, the song seems curiously designed. Just who is being addressed here, and what is the situation being described?

Somebody’s walking, oh somebody’s walking
There on the grave of our love.
And somebody’s kicking the dust and the ashes away.
Why don’t they just let it die
And fade and grow cold again?
Better our footsteps divide
And our memory grow cold again.

Oh, long dead love,
Long dead love.
How much dirt must you shovel on what’s already dead?
Don’t send flowers to remember, send thorns instead.
And who’s that polishing the tombstone over our head?

Who is doing the polishing, indeed? There’s something about "Long Dead Love" that shows that it’s closer to Thompson’s nervous system than you might at first think. If one thinks of the song as a complaint, then is it to a media that will not let his failed marriage drop? Or is the song - somewhat obliquely - directed to Thompson himself?

It seems easy to read the song as a self-complaint. Clearly, Thompson is wearied of writing about his failed marriage - whether intentionally or not - but he’s having trouble stopping.

This reflects a real artists’ dilemma - for three amazing albums, Richard Thompson has emptied out his guts in ways that few artists can without seeming cloying or self important. Thompson has always taken the personal to the universal and made every ounce of his guilt, fear, loss and disgust the property of every listening human being’s nervous system. It is quite clear by now that he is not only tired of following this pathway, but that those emotions have cooled in him that gave those songs their impetus and force to begin with.

Real passion seems to rise out of "Long Dead Love," but it is the passion of frustration with oneself. His vocal reaches a truly violent pitch as he spits out the words, "You know that grave-robbing is a sin and this is a crying disgrace!" before launching into a powerful guitar solo that simply drips with invective and (self?) loathing.

Slow guitar arpeggios reminiscent of the Beatles’ malevolent sound on "I Want You (She’s So Heavy)" drive the song through chord changes that resolve in a still bridge, surrounded by a funereal organ:

Deep in the night, the cruel intention comes stealing.
Deep in the night, I can’t close my eyes for this feeling.

"Long Dead Love" may not be a great song, but its emotion is both genuine and compelling, even if it does remain on such a solipsistic ledge. The passion that is conveyed is the effort one hears - especially in the guitar solo - to break out of this prison of self entrapment.

A "transitional" song in the most literal sense of the word, "Long Dead Love" adds much-needed passion to an album that so far has been either coy or emotionally redundant.

"Lover’s Lane" - Sonically, melodically and vocally, this is by far the most powerful piece on the album since the opening "Bone Through Her Nose." The LP era still overlapped the digital at this point, and this song brought a haunting conclusion to side one. It still feels that way, even on CD.

The song is almost static, a chant resting on Thompson’s frantic guitar picking, and none of its melodies resolve to a conclusion. Mitchell Froom’s production is especially striking here, as he provides Thompson a synthetic wash, accompanied with an uncertain-sounding stand-up jazz bass that gives "Lover’s Lane" a complimentary sheen that does not overwhelm the simplicity of the song.

We return here again to the subject of dead love, but somehow there seems more of a purpose here. If Thompson is going to write about failed love, he’s found an effective way to do it here, with a ghostly simplicity and an emotional emptiness that matches his subject matter:

False hand in false hand,
Down Lover’s Lane, we walked, we two.
Love sold for fool’s gold,
Down Lover’s Lane, we walked we two.

A striking chord change leads to a chorus that simply drips with disgust:

On your back I’ll climb,
Or you climb on mine.
Deception is the rule
On Lover’s Lane.

The scorn is distributed evenly and not a word or phrase is wasted. As though sick of writing these songs, Thompson pushes the edge of his disdain to a fine-pricked point and leaves it there.
The second verse is filled with empty sentiment:

Fine friend, fine friend,
I held such dreams in my caress.
Fine airs, fine airs,
The best of manners and address.

Thompson repeats the venom-filled chorus, then allows the shimmering sounds to wander off into silence. The effect is not the wistfulness of "Ghosts in the Wind," but something much nastier - it is vindictive indictment - self indictment, love indictment. "Lover’s Lane" is effective, perhaps because it is so extreme, untempered by any relief or latitude for understanding. It’s a nihilistic little jab, and the execution of it is so perfectly extreme that it is more than welcome.
If you are going to sing about what you are sick of singing about, perhaps it’s best to thrust as much disdain for your subject matter as possible. On "Lover’s Lane," Thompson does just that, and it works - breathlessly.

"Nearly in Love" - What would be side two of the LP opens with this half-sarcastic romp, in which the singer celebrates a new relationship with what can be seen as a sensibly won (yet somewhat sad) attitude of caution. It’s funny and snide at the same time, while being intelligently believable - a unique hallmark of Richard Thompson’s songwriting:

You’re the one I’ve wanted so long.
But then again I might be wrong.
Now you look just right in the pale moonlight
But let me turn the headlights on.

‘Cause I’m nearly in love, nearly in love.
I’m almost aware of walking on air,
Yes, I’m nearly in love.

This "not-quite" anthem is joyously played and the sarcasm is subdued inside ebullient mid-tempo rock that could remind a listener of Born in the U.S.A.-era Bruce Springsteen - albeit with a slight Celtic tinge reminiscent of Big Country’s eponymous single.

One can’t help but smile listening to this declaration of hesitancy - it is, after all, a mature response that most people in their mid-thirties could appreciate. But the darker undercurrent is the suggestion that for those of us (like Thompson) who have been burned by the fire of their own passions, is that this is the best we can hope for.

"Nearly in Love" is a lively, witty and self-mocking song that kicks in nicely to help re-establish the album’s momentum and which will gradually drive it home to its momentous conclusion.

Video - Richard Thompson: "Nearly in Love"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=l5cklUcNZxI

"Jennie" - This song begins with one of Thompson’s greatest lines: "Oh, trouble becomes you, it cuts you down to my size." Unfortunately, "Jennie" does not lyrically remain at that level (though it reaches toward that height again with, "How many days of his life can a man regret?") This is essentially another lost-love song, quite similar to "Oh Missy How You Let Me Down," but this example seems to work better.

I truly hate to damn Richard Thompson with faint praise, and "Jennie" is truly a lovely, heartfelt song. It simply does not match up to the incredible standards that Thompson has set for himself.
That will not prevent me from enjoying the song - either on CD or on stage, as it is truly soulful and emotionally effective. Thompson plays a particularly evocative guitar solo here, full of slides and mournful bagpipe motifs, in what seems a near-perfect distillation of Celtic rumination and Eric Clapton-style blues. Mitchell Froom encloses the song with soulful organ chords, dulcimer chirps, and a glowing synthetic chord drone that seems to open up into another universe.

Despite its undeniable loveliness, "Jennie" is yet another song that makes one feel that Thompson is grappling to relearn to write songs again. There is an artfulness to it that keeps it distant from Thompson’s own soul, and finally, therefore, ours. This is a recurring problem here on Daring Adventures, and one that Thompson will confront directly before it is all over.

"Baby Talk" - This is another joke song, an upbeat country/Cajun foot-stomper that relates a lover’s complaint with his girlfriend’s proclivity to babble like an infant. I am reminded of the canoe seen in Horse Feathers when Groucho Marx remarks to a similar coquettish ploy with, "If wittle girl doesn’t stop talking like that, big bad man is going to kick all her teeth wight down her thwoat." I actually had a friend whose wife had this proclivity so annoyingly that he sat her down and played this song for her to try to get his point across to her.

Yes, it’s a fun little song - and it could even be hilarious in another context, but here, it’s just another weak attempt on an unsteadily weak album. I struggle to drag more meaning out of the relative immaturity of the singer’s partner. While such implications definitely lie there undeveloped, it doesn’t seem worthwhile to attempt to drag them out here and place them in any larger context that would give "Baby Talk" more resonance. Perhaps it’s better to just enjoy it for what it seems to be on the surface, or maybe even just skip over it.

"Cash Down Never Never" - This song is basically another confection, but it’s one that I’m quite fond of. The narrative addresses the endless cycle of credit and indebtedness of the modern family, especially in an uncertain economy. The lyrics flow glibly and ominously, landing right on target:

Young love, I wish you well,
Shotgun and wedding bells.
Semi-semi and the damp is peeling,
Hole in the roof wets the baby’s head.

Back streets, real scum about.
Need a car, a little run-about.
Some down and a fistful later,
Sign on the line like the nice man said.

Once again, the verbose humor of Chuck Berry is invoked (along with the nervous rhythm of the driving guitar), but here it is employed in an indictment of the savage necessities of pathetically living life in the modern age. (Presumably, this song re-visits some of the same territory as Sunnyvista, but we would like to have a copy of that album to actually scrutinize.)

This song works more broadly than most of the others on Daring Adventures, possibly because, ironically, it is set at a certain distance from the singer. In singing about other people in other circumstances, what he inevitably reveals about himself is his own alienation from modern culture. And given that we know that Richard Thompson as a universal creature, a traditionalist caught in the madness of machinery (either emotional or economic), the song works.

As in "A Bone Through Her Nose," Thompson is re-discovering the power of narration in second or third person. This is something he has done quite successfully since Henry the Human Fly, but in the powerful emotional wake of his Sufi conversion, up to his messy divorce and aftermath, his strength has come from the sheer intensity of his first-person experience. Rediscovering this method of narration is a technique that serves him well here, and it will pay off hugely in many songs to come.

Thompson and Froom really let the effects fly here, making "Cash Down" sound like an ominous horror movie soundtrack, complete with threatening theramin and Exorcist-like tubular bells. Once again, this is not a great song, but it is a treat to listen to.

"How Will I Ever Be Simple Again" - For those of us who might have wondered whatever happened to Richard Thompson the folksinger, he suddenly, unexpectedly re-appears here, acoustically unadorned, save for an unobtrusive upright bass.

The effect is shattering. In the midst of all the clattering of Daring Adventures, Thompson suddenly reaches deep into his old kit bag of English balladry to pull out this breathtakingly, eye-welling simple tale. Ironically, this unexpected simple song takes on all of the dilemmas that Thompson the artist has been struggling with throughout the album and immediately exorcises the demons that howl about him simply by honestly confronting them.

In one of Thompson’s simplest, plainest melodies, he tells a first-person narrative of a soldier encountering a young woman during wartime:

Oh, she danced in the street with the guns all around her,
All torn like a rag doll, barefoot in the rain.
And she sang like a child, "toora-day, toora-daddy,"
Oh how will I ever be simple again?

With exquisite precision and economy, Thompson presents his - and perhaps all of our - dilemmas in an exquisitely metaphorical form. The image of the war-weary, hard-souled soldier observing this startling image of childhood joy is completely disarming - both to him and the listener.

"How Will I Ever Be Simple Again" is a masterpiece of self discovery, and in a sense, of self-recovery. In the distance between the eyes of the soldier and the view of the innocent girl dancing lies the measurement between Thompson (and ourselves) as cynical survivors of life and the idealistic purity with which we all began our journeys.

On another level, this is Thompson the artist, asking of himself how to be an artist once more. All throughout Daring Adventures, we have observed him struggling with the art of effective, emotional songwriting - something so natural to him that he seems born to do nothing else - without retreading his own shattered nervous system and psyche. Like a miracle, he happens upon this exquisite little tale, and all of the pieces fall right back into place. He asks himself precisely the right question, and in asking it, is graced with his answer.

The image that the soldier encounters is told with such dexterity and simplicity that it is completely disarming. The observations do not need any commentary, and are first received with a kind of wondering shock:

She sat by the banks of a dirty grey river
And tried for a fish with a worm on a pin.
There was nothing but fever and ghosts in the water.
Oh, how will I ever be simple again?

The sense of wonder with which he views his remarkable image is truly transformative. The song carries the same poetic resonance of the marvelous scenes in film-maker Jean Renoir’s great humanist masterpiece, Grand Illusion, which could have indeed provided inspiration for this song - even if it did not. In such simple, yet boundlessly powerful images, the soldier/singer’s psyche is transformed and he is re-humanized:

In her poor burned-out house, I sat at her table.
The smell of her hair was like corn fields in May.
And I wanted to weep, and my eyes ached from trying,
Oh, how will I ever be simple again?

Thompson follows with one of his most sweepingly beautiful acoustic guitar solos, notes perfectly placed and delicately balanced, no gratuitously showy technique, but simply, perfectly arched phrases of beauty.

He concludes the song with a plea:

So graceful she moved through the dust and the ruin,
And happy she was in her dances and games.
Oh, teach me to see through your innocent eyes, love.
Oh, how will I ever be simple again?

Once again, and finally, the singer answers his own question, perhaps without even realizing it. His witnessing and acknowledgement of innocence automatically endows it upon his own weary soul. By the end of the song he is truly free.

I can only surmise that this amazing song - certainly one of Thompson’s greatest - probably came unexpectedly, perhaps from the back of his consciousness. Its naturalness is astonishing, and one can feel the pathos of the song singing the singer back to a place from which he can finally begin afresh. There is no question in the listener’s mind that this song is about himself, on the deepest of levels - and no less doubt that its discovery and performance are blissfully curative.

It could certainly not have been planned that Richard Thompson would discover in mid-album a song that would be a pivotal moment for both his art and his life. But nevertheless, coming so unexpectedly at the penultimate moment for Daring Adventures, "How Will I Ever Be Simple Again" seems to magically turn all the neurotic struggling of the preceding songs around and to lay the groundwork for the rest of his career, which would begin immediately with the triumphant closing song of the album.

"Al Bowlly’s in Heaven" - I would probably risk going too far if I were to call this Richard Thompson’s masterpiece. There are simply too many remarkable songs from what is by now obvious to be one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th and 21st centuries. But "Al Bowlly" is special indeed. The song not only ranks alongside his very greatest work, which is certainly saying quite a bit, but it also marks an incredible turning point in Thompson’s perspective, approach to songwriting, and his maturity. I do not think it is going too far to say that "Al Bowlly’s in Heaven" definitively lays down a method and approach that would serve Richard Thompson as a continuing, potent and important artist for the next 20+ years.

Of course, I don’t even know which song was conceived first - but in its sequence on the album, "How Will I Ever Be Simple Again" serves to psychologically pave the way for this amazing piece. I mentioned the process of "re-discovery" when talking about the prior song, and that same re-discovery is at the very essence of what Thompson accomplishes here.

The question that has emerged throughout Daring Adventures is how is the artist to reconnect with his innermost spiritual self and communicate it so directly and powerfully, without relying on his own immediate personal ecstasies and crises in order to accomplish it.

Thompson solves the dilemma by returning to narrative form. In creating a fictional character, as he had done with his early work, he could sketch a terrain that on the surface is quite foreign to him, but by placing it in first person, he could inject all the details straight into his own nervous system and lay out his heart for all to see.

From this point on, we will have many portraits and many guises - some first person, some second - emerge powerfully, and growing in succession - from the pen of Richard Thompson. This is nothing so unique, actually - it is the very stuff that folk music is made of. But beginning here, with "Al Bowlly," Thompson recovers its very heart and soul and applies his own very unique flourishes to the most profound effect.

Interestingly, "Al Bowlly" sounds nothing like a traditional folk song. Nor is there anything particularly "Anglican" about it, except for the narrative. Instead, this is set as an old jazz standard, reminiscent in sound and feel of "St. James Infirmary." The nostalgic feel of the song embodies its subject matter perfectly, providing an awe-inspiring blend of hipster celebration with melancholy loss. Its design is nothing short of perfect. No songwriter other than Richard Thompson - with the possible exception of Ray Davies - could pull off something this amorphously strange while making it sound so personal and desperately vital.

The character inhabited by the singer is an injured war veteran - not from Viet Nam, but from an entirely different era from the rock age, World War II. The theme of the song is the sense of sacrifice and betrayal after giving everything one has to a reality that time slowly dissipates and vanishes, leaving the protagonist a wasted shell of a human being. "Al Bowlly’s in Heaven" is not an anti-war song, per se - it is more an anti-time song. It is the universal realization that the pathos of man is to outlive his relevancy and meaning to an ever-changing world.

The song begins in a minor key, with acoustic guitar chords, and an ominous start-and-stop shuffle. An upright bass enters, resting on one note. Thompson’s vocal emerges, off-centered, on a blue note, with a voice that sounds both commanding and defeated:

Well, we were heroes then. and the girls were all pretty.
And a uniform was a lucky charm, bought you the keys to the city.
We used to dance the whole night through
While Al Bowlly sang "The Very Thought of You."
Now Bowlly’s in heaven,
And I’m in limbo now.

For American listeners, particularly those under the age of 50, the name of Al Bowlly is unlikely to strike any recognition, let alone resonance. Bowlly was a British singer of the 1920s and ‘30s, an extraordinarily popular and influential "crooner" in a similar style to Bing Crosby. His popularity, in fact, was so great that he has been called "the first pop star," displacing the bandleader as the main name attraction at performances. Bowlly was popular in America, but enormous in Britain, where he sold millions of records - 1937’s "The Very Thought of You" was one of his biggest hits.

I have always found it a very interesting phenomena that the musical stylings of the "rock era" have survived and thrived as long as they have, rock and roll artists of the 1950s and ‘60s finding favor with succeeding generations. On the other hand, most of the pre-War popular music and its influences has simply seemed to vanish in popular consciousness. If the singer of "Al Bowlly’s in Heaven" was 20 years old in 1940, when Bowlly was headlining a new band in London, where his audience consisted of young men in uniform, then in 1986 (the date of this album’s release), he would be a mere 46 years old. However, the culture in which he flourished would have been so dead by then that it would seem - to anyone who knew of it - to be anachronistically ancient.

This is part of the singer’s dilemma. The entire world had undergone such a powerful and complete cultural and political revolution, that someone like the narrator would find himself an absolute stranger in contemporary society. For some perspective, consider that here, in 2008, we are listening to an album from 1986, thus making it 22 years old. To us, Daring Adventures sounds remarkably contemporary - so much so that it could easily be a current release. That there has been such a cultural continuity in this long period of time is absolutely amazing. Perhaps more puzzling is the fact that the music and styles from 26 years preceding Daring Adventures were so distant as to seem to belong to another world entirely.

This is the crux of the dislocation in which the singer finds himself in "Al Bowlly’s in Heaven." This is, to a large degree, part of the "limbo" in which he finds himself.

Al Bowlly, on the other hand, is in heaven - that is, he (along with his vast cultural influence) is quite dead. Bowlly was killed in his London flat in 1941 during a campaign of the German Blitzkrieg. He is quite literally, as well as figuratively, gone from the scene.

The description of the scene in the first verse sets the picture very clearly for its context - the aging veteran is recalling his youthful heyday, and if he is exaggerating its glories ("We were heroes then, and the girls were all pretty."), it is probably not by much. At any rate, this is certainly the way the picture lives in the man’s memory.

The second verse goes on to detail is story more closely:

Well, I gave my youth to king and country.
But what’s my country done for me, but sentenced me to misery?
I traded my helmet and my parachute
For a pair of crutches and a demob suit.
Al Bowlly’s in heaven, and I’m in limbo now.

Injured, perhaps crippled during the war, the singer was returned back to his society with barely a thank you, and apparently no financial or psychological assistance. The "demob suit" was a standard issue, cheap, double-breasted suit-coat that each British soldier received during his "demobilization" after the war. The singer’s implication, is of course, that this is all the assistance given to him in his re-transition back into society.

The first bridge of the song, a beautiful, plaintive melody set in a relative major key, wistfully details the kind of life the singer has been living ever since:

Hard times, hard, hard times,
Hostels and missions and dosser’s soup lines,
Can’t close me eyes on a bench or a bed
Without the sound of some battle raging in my head.

Ill equipped, physically or psychologically, for re-entry into British commercial society, the singer has had to resort to a life of living off charity, and his post-war stress syndrome has never been dealt with and has never dissipated.

As time passes, friends fall away or die, the environment becomes ever foreign, and the effort required to keep on surviving gets more and more demanding. The third verse tells it all:

Old friends, you lose so many.
You get run around, all over town,
The wear and the tear, oh, it just drives you down.
St. Mungo’s with its dirty old sheets
Beats standing all day down on Scarborough Street.
Al Bowlly’s in heaven, and I’m in limbo now.

The specificity of the English names and phrases in the song personalize it severely. It is in the details that help make the singer’s plight so convincingly moving. St. Mungo’s is London’s largest charitable organization for homeless people. "Dirty old sheets" is enough to tell the listener all he needs to know about the amenities such charity. Scarborough Street is a public works program, which involves primarily street sweeping and other menial tasks. The picture being painted is not pleasant, and the choices are narrowed down to one humiliating, dehumanizing situation to another. This is a cruel limbo indeed.

Thompson follows with an acoustic guitar solo, backed by bass, brushed snare drum and vibes. For once, he has found an appropriate place to display his Django Reihardt-inflected jazz vocabulary to turn in a stunning performance that wordlessly epitomizes both the bluesy despair of the conditions being described, along with a brilliant flush of grandiose excitement that harkens back to the great days of Bowlly and the big bands. It’s one of Thompson’s most emotionally effective - as well as technically proficient solos - which is saying quite a lot. Through the seeming magic of the note choices of his runs, he manages to both decry and celebrate an entire lost culture, while at the same time evoking it.

As the solo ends, the song moves into its second bridge, which plunges the singer deeper into hopelessness and despair:

Can’t stay here, you’ve got to foot-slog,
Once in a blue moon you might find a job,
Sleep in the rain, you sleep in the snow,
When the beds are all taken you’ve got nowhere to go.

Froom adds synthetic chords that mockingly - though subtly - remind the listener of the sound of the horns of the big bands. For the beginning of the last verse, however, all instrumentation drops out again except for the spare guitar, bass and brushes. Here we enter the center of the singer’s psyche - the memory of the brief time of youth where his life mattered, where he was fully integrated into a community - in fact was king of the world. Thompson’s voice dips into a sense of wondering revery:

Well, I can see me now - I’m back there on the dance floor.
Oh, with a blonde on me arm, redhead to spare,
Spit on my shoes and shine in me hair . . .

A simple drum flourish kicks the music up a notch, as vision unfolding in the singer’s mind takes full form, and he explodes into the unbridled delight of an ecstatic vision:

And there’s Al Bowlly, he’s up on the stand,
Oh, that was a voice, and that was a band . . .

The music pauses, then slows for the ultimate, sad conclusion, the bursting of the dream:

Al Bowlly’s in heaven, and I’m in limbo now.

Thompson sings this finality in a large, haunted, ghostly voice, and as the last chord resolves, the song, as well as the album, are finished.

The moment is sublimely ironic and pitifully sad. We realize, along with the singer, that Al Bowlly is not merely dead, but exists only in an idealized memory or vision - a kind of "heaven" that is accessible to the singer only through his imagination.

The song is much more than a kind of nostalgia - it is the tragedy of human diminution through the loss of time and place. If a human being has no cultural context in which he can function, he becomes an apparition in himself, an aimless ghost wandering around the waste-land limbo of his own soul.

Thompson intuitively taps into the great theme of alienation, which is a universal, not limited to a specific time or place. And like the poor, entrapped "Deserter" of Liege and Lief, he is used by a political machinery that does not care a whit for the nature of his own right to humanity.

Alienation, a theme present from the beginning of his work, begins to take hold here in an entirely new ironic dimension. "Al Bowlly’s in Heaven" is a very important song for Thompson’s development of association through character. In a sense, the song is the "flip side" to the album’s opener, "A Bone Through Her Nose," which traces the desperate attempts of a young woman to stay fashionably up to date. Definitions of self, if allowed to be determined by one’s country, time, phase or fad are a fruitless endeavor, destined to land the individual into a meaningless shell of existence.

The real problem - for Richard Thompson, however - is the question of what is the alternative? If one remains true to one’s self, is the only recourse a trip back into the solipsistic world of emotional suffering? What is preferable - a limbo or a hell?

In Pour Down Like Silver, the young Sufi convert sang about what it would be like to be "Walking Down the Streets of Paradise." An older, wiser man, is now still pondering just how to get there.

This, in essence, is the problem that Richard Thompson has set up for himself, what he sees basically as the universal problem of mankind. In the song "Al Bowlly," he has, as I have said, "re-discovered" a songwriting technique of character creation, one that requires empathy and involvement on the part of the performer and listener. In his examination of his character’s anguish, Thompson discovers his own humanity through this other person’s experience. It is a technique that he will begin to return to, again and again, in many different guises and approaches - it is a kind of writing that allows the artist to enter from the outside, where he can find identity with another and thus discover the depth and wealth of all the emotional and spiritual yearning within himself.

"Al Bowlly’s in Heaven," finally, ends Thompson’s own "daring adventures" and releases him from his own sense of limbo. What he discovers here is that he does not need to sing about himself in order to uncover the truths about himself. There is more than enough human material to pursue to awaken the universal longings of the infinity of the human within - and to transmit that that back to his audience.

After all this time, Thompson’s adventures are, in a sense, just beginning.

Video - Richard Thompson Band performing "Al Bowlly's in Heaven," 2007:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-Vgq6eryp4g