Amnesia

Richard Thompson: Amnesia [October 1988]

Richard Thompson’s first major release in two years seems appropriately titled now, as it is all but forgotten - and indeed, went quite unnoticed at the time. I remember discussion and sarcastic statements on the lines of "Oh, another great Richard Thompson album (Yawn)" regarding its reception by the public and the press. (Even I have to admit that I postponed buying it for more than a year after its release for no particular reason that I recall.) It seems that even Thompson’s hard-core fan base was taking him a bit for granted around this time, which is more the pity, as the album is a crucial one in the development of his latter-day catalogue.

Amnesia’s lack of commercial and emotion impact is particularly ironic, considering that this was his first release on the powerful American Capitol label (historic American home of the Beatles and the Beach Boys - not to mention Frank Sinatra), and someone with the label who was actually a fan had gotten the permission and funds to attempt to push and promote Richard Thompson into the big time. Thompson would remain with Capitol up through Mock Tudor in 1999, and try as they might, they never seemed to be able expand his audience past his core constituency - though that grew as new listeners came of age to hear his music. But radio play and charting positions never materialized.

One can speculate about this failure to reach a broader audience at great length (and we will) without reaching any sort of definitive conclusion. The albums made for Capitol were mostly top-notch - some indeed among the very best of Thompson’s career - but nothing like a mass breakthrough ever remotely occurred. It could be that Richard Thompson’s music is simply too idiosyncratic for the general public, combined with the fact that there is no natural programming niche to which his recordings would naturally appeal - except for some college stations and public broadcasting.

The greater truth probably is that success in the music industry has become a lottery to such a degree that it’s just as likely that Thompson - at some point, with some song - might have hit it huge, as not. With a major label pushing him, he definitely had a greater chance and more of a public profile, but accidents must still happen. There was no critical and commercial "revelation" as comparable with Thompson contemporary and friend Bonnie Raitt, when she hit her long-delayed, multi-platinum "breakthroughs" with The Nick of Time and Luck of the Draw around the turn of the same decade.

Be that whatever it will, was or will become, we still have Amnesia to listen to and treasure - and I urge Thompson fans everywhere to pick up on this marvelous disc, as it is one of his strongest latter-day outings (not counting the two masterpieces, Rumour and Sigh and Mock Tudor, which are absolutely essential.) Amnesia is especially important for Thompson’s subsequent development, as we can observe a real progression from the transitional nature of Daring Adventures to a greater confidence and power in songwriting and story telling throughout this wonderful disc.

The artwork for the album (primarily purchased on Compact Disc, as it was by now becoming the absolute dominant format for music consumption), was interesting, compelling, humorous and thought provoking. A well-groomed man stands shaving, observing his reflection in the mirror. Meanwhile, to the right of his reflection appears the reflection of either yet another mirror - or perhaps a window - in which Thompson appears, dressed as a court jester, juggling colored balls.

The image is very suggestive (and funny) on many levels. The obvious suggestion to first come to my mind is the idea that we project a false image of ourselves, forgetting that behind all of our facades is a fool, struggling just to keep balance as we move through the world behind our masks. Thompson chooses to embody himself as just that fool, a potent symbol of his self-perceived role as an artist - the honest jester, the naked self that seeks to strip away all pretensions and reveal to himself (and to us) what we really are. He is the voice and vision of uncomfortable self awareness that we push to the back of our consciousness. If we have "amnesia" about our true selves, he is the self-appointed clown who is going to remind us of ourselves.

The fool as the revealer of truth has a great tradition in history, particularly in Shakespeare, whose fools - as in King Lear - have a license to tell the truth that nobody particularly wants to acknowledge. And of course that truth is that it is we who are the true fools.

Thinking of this image as emblematic of Thompson’s art and his relationship to his audience, perhaps, upon reflection, it is not surprising that this invaluable artist has never made it to the top of the pop heap. Who really wants their frivolities and frailties revealed, anyway? Moreover, who really wants to identify with a fool or jester in a marketplace dominated by such terribly committed posturing will o’the wisps available everywhere - in music, TV, movies, comics, etc - to adopt as your own in order to boost one’s one projected ego?

The photo on the back cover reveals Thompson as the true man in the mirror, bare chested, with a towel wrapped around his shoulders. He stares blankly at his own visage, seemingly oblivious to the colored balls that he is still juggling, perhaps perpetually and unconsciously. Another graphic appears both within the booklet, as well as imprinted on the CD itself: the side view of a drawing of a man whose brain has been divided in a map of the bizarre old pseudo-science of phrenology. Plastered over each identical brain is a large bold question mark, suggesting the absence of any reliable penetration into the psyche. The individual, even as seen by professional analysis is elusive and unreliable. Man’s mind is a cypher, and we will conveniently forget anything that we find the least bit discomforting.

We will look at how the concept of "amnesia", in this sense, applies to the themes developed in the ten songs on the collection. I must state my opinion right from the start that the songs contained on Amnesia are some of the finest of Thompson’s career, and a true advance from the transitional writing on Daring Adventures, pushing further away from the self-portraiture that dominated Shoot Out the Lights and its immediate successors, and returning, with new strengths and insights, to the types of observational songs initiated on Henry the Human Fly and I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight.

Producer Mitchell Froom is back on board again, providing Thompson’s songs with lush and exotic textures, without ever drowning them in a murky soup. And yes, that magnificent electric guitar returns, as insistent as ever. A photo in the booklet both pays homage and parodies the extraordinary power of this instrument in Thompson’s hands, as it depicts him about to deliver a mighty power chord to a hand-fretted chainsaw. A more apt metaphor for this remarkable player, combined with his ironic sensibility simply cannot be conceived.

"Turning of the Tide" - This is a simple, beautiful, and simply disarming song and a perfect way to lead off the album. It begins with a slow fade-in on a repeated one-chord 4/4 riff on guitar, bass and drums. It pauses momentarily, as we hear Thompson (off mic) count down the beginning. Finally, at full volume and momentum, we are drawn welcomingly in to the album, and Thompson soon begins his simple, authoritative, mournful singing:

How many boys, one night stands,
How many lips, how many hands
Have held you
Like I’m holding you tonight?

Too many nights staying up late,
Too much paint,
No, you can’t hide
From the turning of the tide.

The tone of the song is less accusatory than tender, more understanding and sad than scolding. The feel of the song is as much country and western as it is British folk rock, attesting once again to the variety and depth of Thompson’s influences.

A spare organ joins in as Thompson sings the lovely, melancholy bridge:

Did they run their fingers up and down your shabby dress?
Did they find some tender moment there in your caress?

The next verse and refrain ends with a cautionary note:

The boys all say, "You look so fine,"
But don’t come back a second time.
Oh, you can’t hide from the turning of the tide.

The "turning of the tide" I take to mean not only the fickle sexual usury of the girl in question, but of the ultimate "turning," the returning tide of age. At some point, this lovely young lady will reach a critical age where her female seductiveness will lose its allure - and then what will she be left with?

There are times at which I feel Richard Thompson - like Elvis Costello - to be uncomfortable with sexuality. Rarely is the subject presented in a positive light. But this is no moral lecture here - it is a gentle reminder of what is absent in the way of actual human content. The fact is that if this girl goes on this way, she will be left all alone and emotionally destitute - all her self-fulfilling sexual raptures will be left behind and do her no good.

Here is a good example of the concept of "amnesia" - an idea that resonates so well not only with the songs on this album, but in Richard Thompson songs in general. Thompson paints a situation in which the decisive or resultant thought of the action is absent - only to bring it fully to the forefront of the song. All that matters to the girl is presumably the moment - and she is (at least momentarily) oblivious to the inevitable movement of life’s changing with "the turning of the tide."

But that’s hardly the only irony of the song. The singer conveniently forgets that he is there in exactly the same situation as the girl herself. What good is there to deliver a lecture, even a gentle one, if you are to leave yourself out of the equation? Here we have a situation analogous to the cover photo, where the protagonist stares into the mirror not seeing his own reflection. The listener’s recognition of the singer’s own state of "amnesia" gives him or her a much deeper layer of recognition - and one that can, if seen properly, can deliver a shock of self reflection. Thompson’s second-person delivery points obliquely back to the first person, then shoots beyond to a third person directly involving the listener. The end effect is that no one escapes this "turning of the tide."

Thompson enters with a stirring, yet restrained chord lead on his guitar that rings with clarion sadness and empathy, with slides that re-emphasize the country nature of the tune. The sound is so clean, so precise, that it delivers a deceptive sense of self confidence and assurance in the moral perspective of the artist, oblivious as he is to his own complicity.

The vocals resume with some touches of tacky imagery that seem to set the singer above the situation he describes:

Poor little sailor boy, never set eyes on a woman before.
Did he tell you that he’d love you, darling, forever more?

Pretty little shoes, cheap perfume,
Creaking bed in a hotel room,
Oh, you can’t hide from the turning of the tide.

Why is the little sailor boy "poor," an object of pity? Here the narrator seems to accuse the young lady of corrupting youth. What exactly is he doing with her - the tone and context of the narration seems to suggest an older man (Thompson was 39 when he sang this song) offering condescending advice to a younger woman while still taking advantage of her. Does he tell her he’ll love her forever more? Not bloody well likely. He’s paying for his cheap thrill with a sententiousness that seems to him to buy him the right to a kind of superiority. He is woefully mistaken.

At the end, he is the one in the creaking hotel room bed. What explanations can he give for himself, either morally or humanistically? The thought never occurs to him. And this is the true sadness of the song. We see the spot in our neighbor’s eye, but not the log in our own.

Thompson’s following guitar solo, a luscious elaboration of the lines that he laid out in his first one add dimensions upon dimensions, both musically and meaningfully. He does not need to show off to demonstrate his wizardry. This is simple music at its most unassumingly profound.

Thompson repeats the first bridge and its accompanying concluding verse, before soaring away confidently, beautifully to the song’s end, ostensibly oblivious to all the ironies that he has laid forth. As "Turning of the Tide" comes to its solemn conclusion, the more perceptive among us sit in astonishment that just such quiet genius can not only exist, but slide ever under the radar.
With this deceptively simple opening song, Richard Thompson re-introduces us to the beautiful, understated majesty of his singular vision, and off we are into "Just another great Richard Thompson album" indeed!

Video - Richard Thompson performing "Turning of the Tide," solo, acoustic
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RKzf64vA2FI

"Gypsy Love Songs" - A huge, threatening guitar riff in a minor key and hanging tremolo, set to the incessant pounding of jungle drums and a ghost-infected Hammond organ chord bursts out of the silence to wipe away all the sentimental gloss of the opening song. It comes as a distinct shock to the nervous system, as "heavy" doesn’t get much "heavier" than this. But with Thompson, as electrically assaultive as it is, this opening is completely, persuasively threatening - but we can’t help but ask if it’s all a joke.

One of the great idiosyncrasies of Richard Thompson on electric guitar is the fact that he can deftly, effortlessly out bluster the baddest of punk or heavy metal bands. His sense of irony, however, is disorienting. Is he really putting us through a genuine nightmare of the soul (i.e., "Shoot Out the Lights"), or is he being parodic? Interestingly (and thankfully) songs like "Gypsy Love Songs" sound just as powerful and compelling either way you look at them.

This is a strange narrative indeed. "Gypsy Love Songs" does not seem to have a clear linear story or direct meaning. The images are cobbled together from suggestions of exotic and threatening phenomena, along with playing with cliche’s and puns. The total portrait is indeed of a bad relationship - so bad that it conjures up visions of the supernatural in its most threatening aspect. Whatever actually happened with this woman has sucked the narrator into a vortex of hallucinatory images and uncontrolled paranoia.

Thompson’s voice, so tender on "Turning of the Tide," now enters ferociously, sounding like the mad, punch-drunk survivor of an apocalypse:

Tropical night, malaria moon.
Dying stars of the silver screen.
Oh, she danced that famous gypsy dance
With a hole in her tambourine.

The vision of a night with a "malaria moon" collides with "stars" that are not of the night but of "the silver screen" - that is false, or from a mixed order of reality. Things are mixed and blurred together in the singer’s consciousness. The source of his desperate confusion is a "gypsy dance," a nighttime enchantment that emanates from a woman of such power that it casts a spell over the poor protagonist. The gypsy’s song is simply a metaphor here for an irresistible female power - a sorceress’ song that turns men to swine.

The singer expresses his inexperience, and therefore his vulnerability:

I was young enough and dumb enough.
I swallowed down my Mickey Finn.
She’s hijacked a few hearts all right -
I went into a tail spin.

The chorus consists of a desperate plea set in a descending scale, finally resting on the tonic root, before repeating:

Don’t sing me, don’t sing me,
Don’t sing me no more gypsy love songs.

A single line is added at the end:

Don’t stir it up again.

The "gypsy love songs" are the exotic allures of women to which the narrator is helpless. To "stir" suggests both mixing up an enchanted brew as well as creating psychic and emotional havoc in the singer’s mind and heart.

At this point, it’s a fair question to ask whether we can (or should) take this song seriously. Personally, I love "Gypsy Love Songs," and enjoy the sheer overbearing intensity of its sound and imagery. Thompson the performer pulls out all the stops on this one, particularly on the magnificently multi-tonal attack of his amazing guitar solos. But when it comes down to it, "Gypsy Love Songs" comes off like a sarcastic track that is essentially played for fun. Thompson has always been able to find humor in horror - isn’t that what he is doing here?. This isn’t a real trip into the heart of darkness, is it? It’s no "Shoot Out the Lights," in other words?

But the sheer magnification of all the doom and dread in such an apparently silly context curiously provides its own unique kind of cathartic power. We will see Thompson performing such exercises of excess more and more as his career expands, and in many ways - are such songs meant as replacements for the truly terrifying epiphanies of "Calvary Cross" or "Wall of Death?" Is Thompson merely parodying his own excesses here. Well, if he is, the remarkable fact is that he is able to pull such tricks off with such apparent power that he actually sounds scarifying.

One of the chief keys to this success, is of course his guitar playing. Thompson’s playing is of such intensity and wicked control that it can speak much louder than either his lyrics or his voice - and while it is capable of incredible sarcasm, its sheer meaning and intent can transcend virtually any context. He is a player of such expressionistic emotional abstraction that he has few peers - Robert Fripp and Neil Young come to mind - and the power of his plectrum will convince you of the truth of a hidden anxiety buried even beneath such an apparent confection as this.

Then suddenly, unexpectedly, appears a vocal bridge that seems more in earnest, a puzzling compilation of observations, joined by accordion somehow spills itself out:

Oh stillborn love, passionate dreams, pitiful greed
And the silver tongues of the tinker girls
Who throw the book of life at you
But they don’t know how to read.

This feels different. These are difficult lines to decipher, but they undeniably evoke a very real sense of self deception that underlies all the mock horror of the song and gives it a new momentum and implication of power. It is as if sarcasm is the only mode offered to adequately express the real and horribly empty, banal truths underlying a rant such as this.

Stillborn love.
Passionate dreams.
Pitiful greed.

These are constants in the human condition. And as long as they are present, life is going to offer a frightening bag of tricks, especially in affairs of the heart.

The other constant is a challenge from the opposite sex - a challenge that not only the male is not equipped to deal with, but one in which the female is not schooled in her role or purpose either. What can be expected in such a situation?

The result, for the purposes of this song, is distortion - a kind of self delusion that can blame innate human inadequacies on something as quasi-mythical as "gypsy love songs." The singer can not and will not take responsibility for his own condition, so he projects all of his anxieties and fears onto an imagined, enchanted, female-driven line of superstition that is only a slightly bloated version of the way people actually think.

What we have is another case of "amnesia" here - the sufferer’s faults are inherent in himself and in the human condition. Perhaps facing up to this problem would be an adult way of dealing with the complexities of human relationships. The song, however, stubbornly returns to its litany of grotesqueries. It plays itself out savagely, ultimately committed to its own self deception and dooming its performer to an inescapable private hell.

Therein lies the song’s ultimate power and horror - it is an unrelieved, driving force of self mockery that ultimately remains ignorant of the source of its own anguish. The suffering and the desperation that we hear are real - and we know that they cannot ever be relieved because their source is ever self hidden from the singer.

As the song finally fades away on the nervous pulse of the never-resting guitar, remaining trapped in the same chord forever, we feel the savage electricity that the player has to bear for all eternity.

Ultimately, when looked at closely, "Gypsy Love Songs" is as much as a genuine horror ride as the songs on Shoot Out the Lights. Thompson’s genius here resides in his developing way of getting deeper into such frightening territory through a more circumspect, roundabout way which is actually more universal - and one in which he does not have to continually directly confront demons in his own personal life. This is supreme skill - and art at an ever-ascending level of power.

"Reckless Kind" - This mid-tempo rock ballad settles into an easy groove that drives cooly throughout. The song is addressed to a departing lover whom the singer had befriended, not knowing she is what he calls "the reckless kind." The theme of faithlessness resurfaces, and while there are no great revelations here, there is a fabulous melody, and infectious beat and shimmering, radio-friendly production values. This is what I mean when I talk about the lottery of the charts - there’s no reason on earth why this lovely, heartfelt song could not have been Thompson’s big crossover hit. (It was releasesd as a single.)

Not to imply that Richard Thompson is being deliberately commercial here - this is simply a straightforward side of the songwriter that is effectively genuine without being too outlandish or extreme for radio air play. I don’t know if anyone at Capitol pushed this (or any of these songs) or not, but nobody bit. It’s a pity, I suppose. Still, fans can enjoy this kind of outing - I think that it’s an improvement on some of the similar-sounding fare on Daring Adventures.

"Jerusalem on the Jukebox" - This is a hard-edged, angrily sung song that seems directed at televangelism, a phenomenon that was reaching its peak of cultural influence in the America of the 1980s. The attack appears to be the obvious kind, much in the same way that Frank Zappa and other artists went after the same target during the decade. A subtle difference for the informed listener is that this broadside comes directly from a deeply religious man - although, admittedly not a Christian.

But there is a difference in tone that is at least part of subtext of the song, which is the devaluation of true spiritual experience by greedy show-biz phonies. If such frauds offend a skeptical rationalist such as Zappa, they can be equally, if not more outrageous to the sincere (and humble) pious man.

"Jerusalem" is packed solid with images that collide and roll over one another, much in the style of electric-period Bob Dylan. Of course we know that Dylan was an enormous influence on Thompson, but we really have never seen him emulate any of his stylistics directly. Perhaps the similarity is unintentional, as both writers are speaking in the outraged imagery of prophecy, which is appropriate to a song of this type.

Personally, I find the song only marginally successful - perhaps it is simply too cluttered in its imagery and a bit too strident for it to be effective with me. Others may find it absolutely liberating. It is, if nothing else, another interesting stab by Thompson at a different kind of songwriting, pushing his experimental and changing project yet forward.

Video - Richard Thompson: "Jerusalem on the Jukebox" (I)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=CICnO5ompZw

Video - Richard Thompson: "Jerusalem on the Jukebox (II)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=oW8sSM9r2yI

Video - Richard Thompson performing "Jerusalem on the Jukebox," solo, acoustic
http://youtube.com/watch?v=uR6SYtADXbQ

"I Still Dream" - This is the song. This is the one that should have turned Richard Thompson into an international phenomenon. Of course, I say that about so many of his songs, but how could something this absolutely sublime escape an audience? Of all of Thompson’s "lost-love" songs, "I Still Dream" is absolutely the most painfully gorgeous of them all. The word "standard" seems to settle all around it - there is absolutely no sane reason why this is not one of the best-known songs in the world. Of course to Richard Thompson fans, it is a standard - a classic along the lines of the Beatles’ "Something," the Rolling Stones’ "Angie," or any number of lesser-talented money-pocket noodlers as Phil Collins or Sting. It’s that damned lottery again. Or just maybe, Richard Thompson just goes a little too deep to really command mass success.

Oh well, the hell with it. Let us simply be satisfied with one of the most beautiful songs of all time and praise Allah that there is a Richard Thompson, and those lucky few of us have been fortunate enough to experience such transcendent depth of musical experience.

Of course, as I have argued, Thompson has written quite more than his share of "standards" - great songs that shimmer with a universal beauty: "A Heart Needs a Home," "The Dimming of the Day," "When the Spell Is Broken," just to name a few. A difference here seems to come from whatever source of inspiration gave birth to this masterpiece. Of the songs listed above, Thompson’s muse was shaped out of a beatific vision of God or from the rumblings of his own personal life. "I Still Dream" seems rather, to emerge simply from the desire of a songwriter to write a song.

True, the premise is predicated on lost love and sad regrets - but the lyrics don’t seem to resonate as much on the personal as the universal level here. Though the mention of "ten years" might clue us into thinking the song is about Linda, it is unlikely that Thompson is suffering from that sundering, now six years down the road and happily remarried. More likely is it that he here takes certain biographical details merely as starting points for reflection. For in the end, "I Still Dream" is not a song about a particular relationship, but of a deep cosmic yearning for something that is not truly articulable. The fact that Thompson has found some perfect words to express this most crushing of human emotions is nothing less than miraculous.

The framing device for the song is brilliantly conceived, flawlessly executed and heartbreaking in its subtle beauty. A mournful cornet plays a solemn melody, with simple counterpoint provided by a baritone horn, over the slow, steady pounding of a bass drum. After the first phrase, a couple of more brass instruments are added, filling out the sound pallet, but remaining lonely and dirge-like in tone. It is the sound of a Salvation Army band marching by.

Thompson has used brass like this before, but never to such full effect. The image of a lonely image shuffling down a cold, deserted boulevard is too tangible to miss, and too simple and beautiful to sound feigned. In a masterpiece of conception and production, a quiet snare drum roll leads directly into the modern electric instrumentation of the song itself, and miraculously there is no jarring effect. The same state of mind - or state of the soul, if you will - has just effortlessly morphed into another form, absolutely seamlessly. The result is as deft and effective an establishment of mood as I have ever heard in a recording.

As soon as Thompson’s tortured voice enters, we are already aware of hearing the song being sung from the darkest night of the soul:

It was cruel of you to stand and my door and take my hand.
Like a drowning man I clung to my defenses.

The words "cruel," "drowning man," and "clung" stab sharply - even painfully - out at the listener and insistently assert themselves as direct evidence of pain. What is being described is presented completely from an interior of the most immediate inner torture, and one cannot help but feel it.

We don’t know whom the speaker is addressing - or exactly what the circumstances are being described. But it is impossible to miss the interior meaning being conveyed. It is something the singer has to hide to the person he addresses, and all the residual emotion spills out for us to not only hear, but feel.

And ten years is a time, but your looks, love, it’s a crime,
And I lost my tongue in the tangle of my senses.

Once again, we are unsure exactly what is being expressed, but the experience is leaving the singer in a shattered state of inarticulateness.

And I never was to know that I’d come to miss you so,
But time winds down, and I turned my back long ago.

The singer is recounting an encounter with an ex-lover, and he is rediscovering - or perhaps discovering for the first time - some sort of epiphany of meaning. And whatever realization it is, it is emotionally devastating for him.

As the last phrase of the verse slowly comes to rest, the song pauses, as if it momentarily has nowhere else to go. Like the figure conjured by the Salvation Army band, the song has wandered aimlessly and seemingly has reached a barrier.

Suddenly, in one of the most magical transitions in the history of popular song, a breakthrough is made, and the forceful, earnest chorus begins its chanting in all its haunting, perplexing glory:

But I still dream - oh, darling I still dream.
Oh, I still dream - oh, lord knows I still dream.

It is impossible to communicate the intensity of this simple declaration. For one thing, one has to hear the amazing, lush beauty of the melody, the sense of withheld tension, and the absolute conviction that Thompson packs into every word (and non-word) of this soul-unburdening release.

The key to the song’s power is indeed the simplicity of it, along with its concomitant ambiguity. What is it that the singer still dreams about? Is it his ex lover? It sounds much too broad for that. Is it the belief in a perfect relationship of harmonious love? Yes, but it feels like it’s more. At its very heart of heart, "I Still Dream" is the unleashing of an affirmation of everything that gives beauty and meaning to life - even defiantly, in the face of its most tangible absence.

This is indeed a depth that knows no bottom. The subject of the song is the absence of the subject itself. We can never get to the absolute root of it - any more than we can ever get to the absolute root of our own deepest heart yearnings. It is something nameless, something infinite, something for which we ultimately crave but can never reach - yet we can never be whole without it. All we can do is to assert it - even if we are finally only asserting our need for it.

Dreaming here is more than simply an act of the imagination - it is the assertion of faith. It is the insistence that we will continue to live our lives, investing them fully with every sense of meaning that we can conjure, even though we have no realistic expectation that such rapture will ever reveal itself to us in waking life. In short, the chorus is a chant - an invocation of, and and affirmation of the divine. It is a deep, heartfelt "yes" spoken in a void of disappointed and fragmented realities.

Astoundingly, Richard Thompson seems to have written a perfect song of faith when and where we least expected it, exceeding even his own prayerful hymns from Pour Down Like Silver. For there is nothing more profound than to assert a life of commitment to something that is self-described and self-defined as absolutely absent. For at the very center of the song, there is a missing subject. We cannot say that "I Still Dream" is about love, is about God - or is about anything in particular. Whatever circumstances caused the song to be written, whatever reflections the actions described in the opening verses imply, they are completely transcended by the complete and total affirmation of the chorus.

This is "amnesia" at its total peak. When the subject of a song is nothing but a giant question mark, something incomplete, because absent or totally forgotten from our minds, we reach across an abyss to affirm whatever that unknowable source is. By dreaming, we commit ourselves to something whose name we cannot even recall.

The continuing lyrics of the second verse are even more abstract and rush away from any solid meaning that we wish to pin down to them. Extraordinary verbal imagery stands powerfully enigmatic, meaning something extraordinarily personal, yet fleeting even to the self:

On the killing floor I stand with a stun gun in my hand,
Like a cowboy shooting bad men on the range.
And nothing satisfies, and the soul inside me dies,
As I duck the punch and never risk the change.

Defensive, fear-ridden, the singer avoids direct contact with whatever it is that challenges him at his most deepest level. This is an extraordinary confession, and one can’t help but thinking that this is an honest confession on Thompson’s part, something heartfelt and ultimately something that he has to come face to face with.

At the age of 39, he is perceptive enough to realize that simple assertions and rich intentions are not enough. It is a difficult temptation to sweep the youthful drive for permanent transcendence under the rug of hard-won facts. But in whatever context this encounter has triggered the rediscovery of the absence of that perfection, he turns and faces it here:

And now you look at me with that same old used-to-be,
But time winds down, and I turned my back long ago.

He cannot rest here, though. The all-embracing, all-powerful assertion of the chorus returns and swallows up the imperfections and failures of time and space in one giant tidal wave of feeling and faith. "But I still dream." At least, he seems to be saying, if he can still do that, there is - and will always be - hope, and a reason to live.

One of Thompson’s quietest and most searching guitar solos follows, ending in a flurry of slides that lead him inextricably back to the salvation of that rich, glowing chorus. He repeats it one extra time for ecstatic emphasis, after which the volume drops, and simply and inevitably, the cornet returns with its mournful tune, almost imperceptibly, all the other instruments drop out, leaving the marching band playing sadly alone, left to hover on an unresolved chord.

Yes, this song is very special, even for Richard Thompson. The ability to dive within oneself, prodded by whatever event or idea that set the composition of this song in motion - and even if it does has something to do about Linda, that is completely beside the point now - and to pull up something like this is the undeniable sign of a truly great and fully mature artist.

Amnesia contains only ten songs, and it is the last of Thompson’s albums to be structured in an LP format. "I Still Dream" effectively ends side one, leaving the listener in a silence of wonder and astonishment.

"Don’t Tempt Me" - This unexpected, extraordinary rave up kicks off one of Richard Thompson’s finest sides in the history of the long-playing record - which is rapidly coming to an end in this point in history. Whatever we have gained in sound quality, storage capacity and the strength/endurance capacity of the CD medium, we have surely lost something of the psychological impact of the binary programming inherent in the LP. This is not a complaint, but merely a marker - a reminder, for those old enough to remember - that records had two sides that determined a strict demarcation between a de facto Act I and Act II.

Although Amnesia was primarily purchased in the CD format upon release in 1988, it was the last Thompson album explicitly designed for the LP format. There is a great emotional distancing effect as one listens to the beautiful, elegiac "I Still Dream," let time run out to nothing, flip the record over, only to be hit with something like this. There is a strict demarcation and contrast in the intervening physical pause that cannot be duplicated on the continuous compact disc format.

As mentioned above, "Don’t Tempt Me" shoots out of the speakers like an electric shock - a late-eighties wave of hard-core supersonics - a stunning blend of hard rock, rap and contemporary prog rock blended into an insane rant. Super-compressed drums are soon joined by the intimitable sound of Tony Levin’s Chapman Stick - an eight-stringed, touch sensitive electronic bass instrument that gave crucial definition to the sound of both the 1980s incarnation of King Crimson, as well as the sonorous textures of that decade’s Peter Gabriel albums.

As a matter of fact, having Levin, the bald-headed virtuoso appearing on the album - especially as prominently as he is featured here - is a kind of statement in itself. Not only do Mitchell Froom and Thompson place this music squarely in the sound of some of the most sophisticated rock of the decade, but by implication, automatically include Richard Thompson as part of the perception of where he (and his audience) essentially lie within the context of the music scene as a whole.

I have no idea if this had anything to do with an attempted aesthetic marketing strategy or not. It really doesn’t matter in the end, however - Levin’s playing, and Froom’s production in general, do nothing more or less than to amp up a phenomenally charged Thompson performance, making it even more exciting (and funny) than it would have been otherwise.

I also used the term "rap," before, and unbelievably, that is precisely what "Don’t Tempt Me" is - albeit inflected with the synthetic ambience of bagpipes and Thompson’s outraged north-England accent.

"Dont Tempt Me" is not merely an aggressive rock piece, it is absolutely bananas, everything over the top. The strangest and most appealing thing about the recording and performance is that no matter how far out musicians and producer take this thing - which is quite a ways indeed - it seems to transcend its ridiculousness enough to sound absolutely serious and even frighteningly real.

Thompson’s insane idiot character begins his diatribe at the very peak of sexual jealousy, sustains it for the duration of the song, and even manages to push it past parody, into something that strains incredulously, yet somehow, never manages to break.

His shouted lyrics are simultaneously inane and ultimately convincing:

That gorilla you’re dancing with
May not have too long to live.
He’s putting his hands in the wrong places,
Time to rearrange his face.
He’s gonna dance with me instead,
And I’m gonna tap dance on his head!

The synthetic pipes beat the refrain of a Scottish martial march as the chorus explodes into its threatening bluster:

Don’t tempt me - Don’t tempt me - Don’t tempt me -
I’m halfway out of my seat!

The fact that all this mad raving ends with a bluster that is clearly a bluff is, of course, hilarious. Thompson does not relent one iota, however, and keeps up his rant with wonderful, paranoic wordplay:

He’s got the looks, he’s got the lolly,
Driving me clean off my trolly.
Doing the jitterbug, doing the jive,
Doing the shimmy, snakes alive.
That’s not a dance, that’s S-E-X,
Ban that couple Certificate X.

Don’t tempt me . . .

The vision of the outraged boyfriend sitting helplessly in a bar chair, watching his girl in the throes of dirty dancing while exploding inside is ridiculously comic. Even more funny, is as we listen, we imagine that he is probably not actually saying a word - that all this bluster is going on silently, completely in his mind.

The mock-ominous bridge, with its driving tribal drums and a wordless deep-bass male chant that sounds like a cross between a group of mad monks and the Witch's guards in The Wizard of Oz, not only make things more ridiculous, but paradoxically more serious, more desperate. Thompson’s clipped shouts:

Oh, I’m a patient man!
But it’s out of hand!
If there’s one thing I can’t stand . . .

lead his threats to ever new heights on the next verse. Levin’s solitary bass keeps the momentum testosterone laden:

Get your mitts off my gal,
Or you’ll end up as mincemeat, pal.
I’ve got friends, mean sons,
They’ve got knives, chains, guns,
Gas grenades, knuckle dusters,
Lazy Susans, blockbusters.

We’ve escalated from a fit of jealousy to a mad fantasy of revenge beyond proportions - the larger the threats, the more we sense the impotence of the threatened male as he shrinks simultaneously in our estimation. His mental summoning of an entire army and advanced weaponry (what is a Lazy Susan, anyway?) goes beyond the ludicrous to the possibly insane.

After an audacious shout that straddles the line between savage attack and horrific surrender, Thompson launches into a particularly savage guitar solo with tiny clusters of notes and little rocket slides, musically threatening, though still ultimately impotent. Levin gives a brief, masculine flourish, then Froom follows up on the second half of the solo with wheedling, whining pipe music - flags fluttering on an empty field.

In the third verse, the singer gives himself the lie:

I’m sitting here as calm as I can
While you polish the floor with another man.
I’m not mad, I’m a cuddly toy,
Just keep me away from laughing boy.
You say he’s a relative - some hope!
If he’s your uncle, I’m the Pope!

Don’t tempt me . . .
I’m halfway out of my seat!

Despite all his threats, he is going to do nothing - not even confront the couple. The portrait of helpless, pathetic jealous vulnerability is complete.

Thompson’s return to his savage guitar sets off a series of descending runs that repeat continually, going nowhere. This is all blustering fury, and as the music fades to silence we realize that this little scene will not only come to nothing, but will remain under the singer’s skin, ever a hidden, festering boil.

Of course, "Don’t Tempt Me" is a joke. The big question is, if the entire song, the entire conceit, is so comic, why the hell does it sound so god-damned threatening? There is the unmistakable sound of real rage in "Don’t Tempt Me," and an ominous, palpable threat that seems just as real as the very real threat of "Shoot Out the Lights." Is it simply that Thompson is just so exceedingly good at sounding threatening? Something tells me there is more to it than that.

Perhaps the real horror of "Don’t Tempt Me" is the very serious undertone of the ridiculous surface. What is terrifying is the degree of savagery and fear that can be conjured up in the human spirit, even when a will to act is not present or is thwarted by intimidation, both social and personal.

In the end, "Don’t Tempt Me’ is more a horrific nightmare than a joke - and by the tone of Thompson’s voice, he knows this. By setting up this pathetic situation in his mind, he is forced (and likewise forces us) to confront not only our very valid sense of vulnerability in sexuality, but our utter helplessness to do anything about it.

That is the secret of the song - its subject is not what it reports but our observation of the reporter. Here we find another case of "amnesia" - the singer is so obsessed with jealousy of his girlfriend that he misses the larger picture and the greater threat to his own ego - his utter powerlessness.

This is why the song works so well on several levels. Thompson himself is one step removed from the singer and his perspective. What is ultimately scarifying in the performance of "Don’t Tempt Me" is Thompson’s genuine horror at his own inadequacy to face down the real threats of life where they are most sincerely important and incapable of defense.

Do not make the mistake of dismissing this song as a laugher - "Don’t Tempt Me" is one of the most searing of Richard Thompson’s paranoid ironies, perfectly realized by a master of the form. Paradoxically, the deeper he reaches into his own hidden anxieties, the more powerful and disturbing he becomes as a songwriter. "Don’t Tempt Me" is another bold new step to extend and deepen Richard Thompson’s very unique art and to keep moving ahead in surprisingly new and varied ways.

Video - Richard Thompson: "Dont Tempt Me" (with animation)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=eJ6vR6Kj2hI

"Yankee Go Home" - Oh, my God, I love this song!

I must confess that on first hearing this album, I was confused by what seemed to be an extreme - and from my perspective, perversely distorted - hate rant against the presence of American armed forces in Britain during World War II. Well, of course I was confused - I am an American.

I grew up with the sure knowledge of my father’s and his generation’s patriotic bravery at saving the U.K. - to enormous casualties and loss - along with the rest of Western Europe, from the most horrific and formidable evil military machine in history. I was taught the Invasion of Normandy in school, I had watched all the movies. There has never been any question in my mind about the absolute determining necessity of the entrance of the United States into the war, in order to defeat the onslaught of the Nazi forces. Nor do I doubt that now. The heritage that I have is that America came over and saved Britain’s - and Europe’s - collective ass.

Given this unshakeable perspective of history, I found it very difficult to assimilate the utter hatred and disdain of the British populace for American presence in possibly the single most important moment in modern history. Of course I knew that there had been cultural conflicts between us and the Brits, and rightly I knew that our boys had somewhat of a reputation for being "lady-killers" overseas - but hey, boys will be boys. And considering what they were asked to do - which was essentially to die - one could not only not blame the soldiers their overseas picadilloes, but - at least to some degree - recognized that they bloody well deserved them, and that the British should (and were) nothing but grateful for our tremendous sacrifice on their part.
No wonder this song seemed skewed to me:

Oh, G.I. Joe, put your gun away,
The sun is setting on another day.
Why don’t you leave us alone?
Yankee, go home!

They’re burning effigies out in the street.
Man the lifeboats, sound the retreat.
Pentagon’s on the phone,
Yankee go home!

My first reaction was to interpret the song as a kind of satirical send up of the rantings of a crank. Yes, there must have been some conflict between the Brits and the Americans. Yes, I’d heard the stories of silk-stocking seductions. And yes, I’d heard the popular phrase, "Yankee Go Home," but had never given it much thought. Surely there wasn’t this degree of animosity among the Anglican people during our assistance of their "finest hour."

But two things bothered me. First, what was the point of the song? Secondly, why did it feel so relentlessly heartfelt? Thompson had returned to the past, once again, and brought up to light the very real cultural resentment that festered throughout Britain at the time that thousands of American servicemen were being handed the keys to their kingdom.

There was a reason "Yankee Go Home" was spray-painted across London. There is no telling the depth of the anger, frustration and resentment that ordinary English folk must have felt during what must have felt to many of them like a foreign "occupation" by their chief ally.

Still, what was Richard Thompson’s true perspective here? He knew his history. When he has the narrator sing, "We’ll handle this on our own," I knew he must have realized that the British army was incapable of that - or the Americans wouldn’t have been over there in the first place.
Still, the song is so consistently vituperous, the anger so real and palpable, that it could not just be a satire. First of all, there is too much truth in the telling - the complaints seem not only fully justified in the face of a wounded civilization, but the likelihood of a general disgust in the British population seemed all the more likely and real the more I thought about it.

"Yankee Go Home" was a real attitude of the time - not the only attitude, but a strong one, and one shared by many across the proud ancient country of Britain. Was Thompson actually siding with this sense of animosity?

Let us point out that Richard Thompson traditionally writes songs from a very condensed point of view - and that view is not necessarily his own, or at least not wholly alone. It is certainly possible for a British citizen to both appreciate the sacrifice of American forces, and at the same time seethe at their very barbarian presence in their state. I think Thompson probably has a rational admixture of views about this subject - but that rational center is not the place that the song he chose to write originated. Instead, it radiates from what is, seen isolated and of itself, a perfectly definable and defensible point of view. It is an extreme view, to be sure - but Thompson writes extreme songs. Why should we expect less here?

What is the singer (and the nation’s) main complaint against American troops?

Thompson spells it out here as clearly as he spelled it out in "Don’t Tempt Me": S-E-X. As a matter of fact, "Yankee Go Home" has quite a great deal in common with the previous song. They both speak from a sense of impotent rage and jealousy over usurpation over which they have no real control. Both can be seen as over-reactions - based upon completely understandable reactions in the face of their respective situations.

The real question I find myself asking now is, "Why do I find this song so fulfilling and liberating?" After all, it’s directed at me. There is a contagion to "Yankee Go Home," a self-liberating joy of shouting along - and the song, angry as it is, definitely has a happy, sing-along feel. Well . . . I guess there’s some part of me that really hates Americans, too.

It’s not so much that America is not or should not be appreciated - I certainly doubt that even the would-be singers of this hymn would not concede respect and appreciation for this country’s contribution to the war effort, and to varying degrees, in keeping the peace in Europe for over a half century. I think the song is more about American arrogance than anything else. There is always sensed a presumption upon the part of both the American people and the government that they are special - and deserve uncritical thanks and special treatment. Moreover, the American’s notoriously garish provinciality assumes superiority without adequate justification - along with an ignorant lack of respect for long-established native traditions.

Today, the world looks trepidatiously at this great international power carelessly imposing its own sense of values upon a wary ancient civilization. American cultural hegemony threatens the self-identification of more than one nationality with our all-levelling blend of bland consumer culture.

I relate to this song somewhat in a way that I relate to the Clash’s "I’m So Bored With the U.S.A." Well, speaking as an American, I’m bored with the U.S.A., too. There is a repetitious sameness in American culture, coupled with a sense of entitlement that truly is boorish to any sensitive human being. I suppose the bottom line is that I sympathize with the fed-up Brits in the song, and it feels good to sing along, admittedly fed up with the rank stupidity of my own people.

This does not mean that I love my country less - or certainly not their country more. In essence, I long for a medium in which humans can connect on a superior, more respectful level than nationalistic or cultural lines will allow. In a sense, I feel like "Yankee Go Home" is a boundary-erasing anthem, and it’s something that everyone should learn from.

Moving back to Thompson’s text itself, we can fully understand the complaints. As I said before, many of them are sexual in nature:

Oh, you turned my sister into a whore
With a pair of silk stockings from the PX store . . .

My girlfriend still won’t talk to me
Since she met a sailor from the land of the free.
I’m tired of being alone,
Yankee go home!

Resentment runs rampage - and I must re-iterate that it does reveal quite a deal of innate insecurity. Are British men really more considerate of their women than the visiting Americans? Would they truly have better luck with them if the Yanks weren’t "Overpaid, over-sexed, and over here," as the song asserts, which must have been an oft-repeated mantra of complaint during the war years?

The cultural arguments are weaker, but they are still there: "Coca-Cola makes my teeth go bad" is about as strong as it gets. There’s something quite powerful about the line that concludes, "The Hun’s at the gates of Rome / Yankee go home!" We think about the "Hun" and immediately think about the German military powers - but here the term is transformed into a portrait of the ugly, boorish American carelessly stomping on all treasured European culture, as well as all cultivated sense of propriety.

Of course the song is too extreme and one sided - and that’s precisely what makes it so great. The "amnesia" at work in "Yankee Go Home" is both the convenient dismissal of the dependency of England on American power for survival, as well as the lapse of self criticism (and honesty) in the face of a threatening rival.

We almost sense more of a hatred for Britain’s ally than for the mutual foe - the guys who they should really be worried about. But somehow that’s just fine in this conflicted, hilarious bombardment that drips layer upon layer of irony. Perhaps the real truth that is always the unbidden truth about oneself that its the greatest release is what finally makes this song so liberating and powerful - and still confusing.

Listening to the song once again, I sense more and more a carefully crafted nasty arrogance on the part of the singer, which is reflected in the self-righteous tone of the defiant fiddle solos. But then again, who is to say what the absolute interpretation is here - when truths are mixed with half truths that ignore individual culpability, they sit uneasily on the head of a pin?

Once again, I just love this song. It’s one of the most perverse things Thompson has ever written - which is saying quite a lot, indeed.

"Can’t Win" - Here, Amnesia climaxes with simply one of the greatest songs of Richard Thompson’s career. In a sense, "Can’t Win" flows quite naturally out of "Don’t Tempt Me" and - perhaps more importantly - "Yankee Go Home." Because it is here that Thompson turns his attention directly toward the national (British?) disease of placing a restrictive mind frame on a person, beginning with childhood. The song’s sense of petty suburban jealousy is reminiscent of the portrait painted in "Small Town Romance," where every nicely kept home houses an enemy that is bound and determined not to let you have it better than they do.

This is one of Thompson’s most direct and powerful songs - and one where he sounds genuinely angry and disgusted. Is the song at least partly autobiographical? Certainly, we must assume that if Thompson himself was not persecuted in his youth by nay-sayers, he must have lived in their general shadow or aura, along with all his mates - otherwise this song would never had been written. "Can’t Win" is angry, convincing and vital - and in the course of the performance, Thompson has a chance to throw back everything in the face of anyone who ever gave him a discouraging word.

The song’s structure is extraordinary - it starts out softly and balladic, working its way through uncertainty, finally arriving in a hard fatalistic dirge that ultimately transforms into a raging fury. It is perhaps Thompson’s most self-energizing, cathartic works, and within all the hell of its imagery, it contains the seeds of self healing - both for the singer and the listener.

It’s probably best to let the lyrics speak for themselves here - but it is the gorgeous melody and the astonishing soundscape (not to mention the savage vocal) that escalates throughout that truly sells the song and makes it more a direct experience than simply an idea.

It begins softly and simply enough:

I started to cry, they put gin in my cup.
I started to crawl, and they swaddled me up.
I got up and run, they said, "Easy son,
Play up, play the game."

They told me to think and forget what I heard.
They told me to lie, and they questioned my word.
They told me to fail, better sink than sail,
"Just play the game."

The images come together so naturally, so concisely that it seems like thinking like this comes second nature to the writer. He is painting a portrait, not only of his own soul-crushing youth, but of an entire community - even a culture - where keeping in one’s place, "playing the game," is what keeps the society in a safe, harmonic balance.

In a transition section, Thompson goes into a series of unresolved jazz chords, as the creeping bass line takes over the uncertain support of the song as he howls helplessly over the top. The tension, the push of the imagery begins to turn Biblical, thus stamping its inevitability on the head of the young singer:

"Oh, towers will tumble, and locusts will visit the land.
Oh, a curse on your house and your children and the fruit of your hand."

From the soft, opening acoustic phrases of the song, we have now built up incrementally to the harsh, drum-driven electric drive that presses its harsh inevitability, complete with background chorus:

They say, "You can’t win. You can’t win.
You sweat blood. You give in.
You can’t win. You can’t win.
Turn the cheek. Take it on the chin."

The power builds as the words start flowing more freely, Thompson getting angrier and angrier on top of their driving, building momentum:

"Don’t you dare do this. Don’t you dare do that.
We shoot down dreams. We stiletto in the back.
The nerve of some people, the nerve of some people,
The nerve of some people, I don’t know who you think you are,
Who you think you are!"

As the song crescendos here, we return to the beginning of the second verse. This time around, however, the pounding drum and the electronic sounds remain (though muffled) to join the acoustic playing, and Thompson’s vocal retains the angry edge that he picked up from the chorus. The dynamics are brought down from the chorus, though, as we feel the inevitable rise back up. Here, he goes directly at the parents' culpability as well:

What kind of mother would hamstring her sons?
Throw sand in their eyes and put ice on their tongues?
Ah, better to leave than to stay here and grieve
And play the game.

Don’t waken the dead as you sleepwalk around.
If you’ve got a dream, brother, hush not a sound.
Just stand there and rust, die if you must, but play the game.

Here, as the transitional section returns, Thompson hones in on the heart of his target:

Oh, if we can’t have it, why should a wretch like you?
Oh, it was drilled in our heads, now we drill it into your head too.

Every urgency of discouragement is rooted in self loathing and the fatal need to keep one’s own jealousy placated. It is a killing environment, and when the chorus returns in its inexorable march, the communal chanting is more insistent than ever. Finally, as the final line is repeated, it is resurrected, presumably to eternity:

The nerve of some people, the nerve of some people,
The nerve of some people, the nerve of some people,
The nerve of some people, the nerve of some people,
The nerve of some people, the nerve of some people . . .

The unyielding pressure of this repetition of thought and experience gets ever more forceful. Ironically, the harder it pushes, the more enraged the singer becomes, until his chant is a Prometheon-like defiant mock of their own words.

Suddenly, Thompson unleashes his electric guitar as the ultimate "fuck you" riposte to this litany, firing volleys like fire bombs. His revenge is ultimate, as he mockingly locks into repeated passages, only to burst out of them again with a sneering defiance that fulfills the promise of every rock and roll sneer since Elvis Presley.

"Can’t Win" is another of Richard Thompson’s great "hidden classics": unheard, virtually unknown, but nearly on a par with the Who’s "Won’t Get Fooled Again" as the very backbone of the realization of self through rock music.

"Can’t Win" is a staggering masterpiece. Any fear of decline in Richard Thompson is now totally gone. Here, as the 1980s close, with the ‘60s long gone, and the last energetic waves of punk crashing slowly to the shore, he, Neil Young and Lou Reed are still fearlessly out there, pushing way past everybody in the never-ending demand for autonomy and freedom.

"Waltzing’s for Dreamers" - Once again, as on Daring Adventures, the penultimate song on the album is a surprisingly soft acoustic number, Thompson accompanied only by a fiddle and the gorgeous, sonorous double bass of future collaborator Danny Thompson (no relation). "Waltzing’s for Dreamers" is a waltz (surprise!), but more importantly, it is an absolutely beautiful, simple ballad of loneliness. In a sense, the song is about itself, as the waltz of the song becomes a surrogate for love, or really, any meaningful relationship or experience.

This is one of those special songs that only Richard Thompson can seem to write - its simplicity completely surpasses any accusation of corniness - the singer is such a song is obviously a self-confessed square - to go straight on to transcendent pathos. Like Hank Williams, Thompson has a way with words that seem to go straight into the heart of loneliness:

Oh, play me a blue song and fade down the light,
I’m as sad as a proud man can be sad tonight.
Just let me dream on, just let me sway,
While the sweet violins and the saxophone play.
And Miss, you don’t know me, but can’t we pretend
That we care for each other ‘till the band reach the end?

The chorus immediately fulfills the song as yet another classic - a great standard that almost no one knows, nor will ever hear:

One step’s for aching,
And two steps for breaking,
Waltzing’s for dreamers and losers in love.

One step for sighing,
And two steps for crying,
Waltzing’s for dreamers and losers in love.

This has become a de rigeur experience for Richard Thompson fans - such songs become so imbedded in the heart, brain and nervous system, that we forget that not everyone else in the world knows them. In a way, such a perfect ode to loneliness is a description of Thompson’s music itself. Music never heard is almost like a love never expressed - or at least appreciated.

For those who may have forgotten, Thompson adds a marvelously lush acoustic guitar solo of such grace and facility that it’s almost a shock to recall what a truly great folk musician he is.
"Waltzing’s for Dreamers" is set and sung as an English ballad, but with a slight change of pronunciation, this could be an honest-to-goodness country & western classic. Hell, it could be a gondolier’s song - it could probably be anything. The universality of it is part of its sheer perfection.

Lost love, unheard music, unseen lives - with "Waltzing’s for Dreamers," we reach the very heart of "amnesia."

Video - Richard Thompson: "Waltzing's for Dreamers"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9GJS806WzfI

"Pharaoh" - The album reaches its ultimate closure with this quiet, exotic, jaw-dropping meditation. The songs of Amnesia have had many sources, both social and emotional, but they have all (save "Jerusalem on the Jukebox") have been of a personal nature. "Pharaoh" shocks us by taking a political/economic metaphor and pushing it just enough that it transcends its theme and ends up incorporating all of our actions and thoughts in a finely wrapped package of sad epiphany.

This is a song for the ages - as true and inexorable as life and death itself. It is that rare song that makes us suddenly aware of the invisible bonds that shape all of our destinies and link us all together, both in time and place, inextricably together.

"Pharaoh" uses understatement and simplicity to conjure up world-shaking cognition. The song is slow and stately, the instrumentation lightly exotic with electronics, the melody composed in an Eastern mode that not only fits its theme, but allows it to flow effortlessly, unyieldingly, like the Nile itself.

Thompson’s vocal is the key that ties the whole thing together: his voice has the passion of the Biblical prophet, but combined with the weary resignation of the modern man:

Pharaoh he sits in his tower of steel,
The dogs of money all at his heel.
Magicians cry, "Oh truth! Oh real!"
We’re all working for the Pharaoh.

The portrait is painted very quickly and succinctly. The "tower of steel" is a corporate head office, money rules everyone’s lives, and reality is defined by the desires and needs of those at the top, making the rules. But it’s not simply that the modern CEO is a Pharaoh-like figure - this world situation is a constant, and it affects us all at every level:

A thousand eyes, a thousand ears,
He feeds us all, he feeds our fears,
Don’t stir in your sleep tonight, my dears,
We’re all working for the Pharaoh.

The truth of life for the majority of mankind is labor - a daily grind for subsistence in a world not of our shaping, but always for powers beyond our control:

I dig a ditch, I shape a stone,
Another battlement for his throne.
Another day on earth is flown.
We’re all working for the Pharaoh.

The great tragedy of mankind is summed up succinctly in the one line, "Another day on earth is flown." How much more simple and elegantly can this be put? The only rival for it I can think of is Ray Davies’ magnificent couplet in "Oklahoma U.S.A.": "All life we work but work is a bore, / If life’s for living, what’s living for?" The precious gift of life is, generation after generation, squandered on pointless, ego-degrading labor. It is Thompson’s call to point out just who is responsible for this situation.

"Pharaoh" is not simply an anti-capitalist diatribe - this is a universal truth that power controls and determines exactly what life on earth will be like, whatever form it takes. It can be anywhere and anytime: "Call it England, you can call it Spain." Thompson’s ultimate reference to the Biblical correlation in the chorus gives the situation its proper tone of eternality:

And it’s Egypt land, Egypt land,
We’re all living in Egypt land.
Tell me brother, don’t you understand?
We’re all working for the Pharaoh.

"Egypt Land" is not simply Egypt - it is the eternal state of alienated oppression. More explicitly, Thompson calls on divine deliverance: "Moses, free my people again."

Pharaoh he sits in his tower of steel,
Around his feet the princes kneel.
Far beneath, we shoulder the wheel,
We’re all working for the Pharaoh.

The song reaches its conclusion with no prospect of release - because there is none in this life.
If you can listen to this song without feeling profoundly disturbed and not be moved to a universal pathos for all of mankind, you simply are not hearing it. It’s your voice that Richard Thompson is pleading to: "Tell me brother, don’t you understand?"

Not to recognize this absolute truth is probably the most universally fatal example of "amnesia" we can identify. And it is here that the album ends.

Video - Richard Thompson performing "Pharaoh," solo acoustic
http://youtube.com/watch?v=gPNlzLQnN84

I have been referring to the concept of "amnesia" throughout the discussion of the album, but I do not mean to seriously advocate that this is a "concept album" in the general sense of the term. I merely find the title appropriate when thought about and applied, not only to these songs, but to Richard Thompson’s songs in general. The title and the cover art conjure up an essential something that is missing or forgotten - it’s almost as if songs are written around a blank cipher. There’s something not there that should be the actual content of the song. It is is this "amnesia," this lack of recognition in one’s self that give Thompson’s songs their peculiar sense of ironic tragedy - and this is something that goes back at least to Henry the Human Fly.

Amnesia is a beautiful album - the sound is lush and seductive, without being overwhelming. More importantly, Thompson has re-mastered the style of songwriting from an external perspective, or from a portrait. I find this album to be the aesthetic and emotional equal of Hand of Kindness and Across a Crowded Room, but without the burden of having to emote from the gut in order to reach that special place where a song connects deeply and immediately with a listener.

This is a new kind of album for Thompson - and with all of the good and truly great songs collected here, it is, in a sense, just the beginning of another stage of a journey that will soon flower with some of the most amazing work of his now-long, yet still-winding journey.