Across a Crowded Room

Richard Thompson: Across a Crowded Room [April 1985]

Even more so than his solo "debut," Hand of Kindness, this follow-up, full-throttle electric album defined what would be come to be known an understood as a "Richard Thompson album" during the 1980s and ‘90s. Speaking personally, I recall feeling at the time that Across a Crowded Room was a richer, more fully accomplished piece of work than its predecessor at that time. What sticks in my mind is mostly the unified and distinct sound and mood of the album.

Recorded in late 1984, and still produced by Joe Boyd (though issued under the Polygram label), Across a Crowded Room bore the stamp of the lush, high-treble production values of the MTV-era ‘80s. The album seems to have been recorded in a kind of ghostly echo chamber environment, and Thompson’s voice is loaded with reverb. It is a sound that is very similar to Bruce Springsteen’s epochal Born in the U.S.A., released the previous summer, but its mood is much spookier - and much more idiosyncratically personal.

Listening freshly to the album today, the tone and quality of the entire project seems much less consistent (and more transparent) than it did at the time. But if to conclude that this is finally inferior to Hand of Kindness, in retrospect, it in no ways devalues a fine collection of songs, a small fistful of genuine classics that rate with the best that Thompson has ever produced.
As a whole, however, I cannot say that the album stands up the standards that Thompson set before - or after. The fact that this does not diminish in any way the memory of the haunting power that it held over me in 1985 suggests that it could still have a similar effect on a newcomer to Thompson’s music. That is to say, Across a Crowded Room is still more vital, powerful and compelling listening than 99% of the albums by other artists from that time hence.

One oddity about the album is that it was the first by Thompson to be released on compact disc. The LP configuration and the CD differed - both by running sequence and the inclusion of an additional song on the CD. It is the LP that I purchased at the time, and that I fell in love with - and it is the CD that I am listening to today. Could such subtle changes effect the impact of an album to such a degree that it substantially alters its overall impact to its detriment - in fact, making it, however slightly psychologically, into a very different statement? This is a question I will return to after discussing the songs as they stand on the CD version I possess today.

Changes in tone coincide with changes in theme, and in this sense, Across a Crowded Room is somewhat retrogressive. If Hand of Kindness stands as a kind of contrite, yet self-affirmed declaration of independence for the artist, Crowded Room seems antithetically hushed, pushed back into a psychological mire of guilt and defensiveness. This, odd as it seems, however, is not a criticism. It is precisely that claustrophobic sense of inward paranoia that gives Crowded Room much of its power.

In fact, it might not be going to far to say that this is the album one might expect to follow Shoot Out the Lights - the ghost of Linda and the messy emotional fallout of the divorce seems to permeate it to the grooves. The accumulated, sprawling mess of unrelated objects depicted on the front cover seems to be an apt symbol for the disordered debris left in the chaotic wake of this personal cataclysm.

The density of the sound of the album fits this theme well - and Across a Crowded Room indeed works best when it adheres to the thematic motifs suggested by its title and the artists’s history. As a matter of fact, Crowded Room seemingly begins its odyssey as a concept album, strictly regarding the aftermath of the breakup. One can understand why Thompson would not want to do an entire album of this nature, but it is true that whenever the songs veer away from this central sphere, the emotional center seems to be lost, and one has to wait until another great, thematically-related song comes around to re-center the record again.

There is no question that there are some of Thompson’s most powerful and frightening works on here - and songs like "When the Spell Is Broken" and "She Twists the Knife Again" function on a much deeper level than any witty or poetic conceit could possibly take complete claim for. This is where Thompson seems to be digging under his skin, and whenever he does this, with all apparent honesty and horror, it is exactly what is communicated directly to the listener, as if via an intravenous tube. Whenever that appears to be happening, that is where Crowded Room is functioning at its best, and indeed, where it sounds like the masterpiece it quite could have been.

"When the Spell Is Broken" - Across a Crowded Room kicks off breathlessly with this ominous, moody classic - one of Richard Thompson’s greatest songs and vocal performances. The effect, in fact of "When the Spell Is Broken" is so powerful as to completely dominate the entire sense of the album, so that expectations are not only phenomenally high for the rest of the disc, but in retrospect, whenever one thinks of Crowded Room, this is immediately the song with which they associate it.

"When the Spell Is Broken" is actually a very simply constructed song. Based in a minor key with a threatening, steady mid-tempo drumbeat, it immediately drags the listener into a deep, heavy groove that is reminiscent of "I Heard it Through the Grapevine."

It is, in fact, to a large degree, due to the song’s simplicity that Thompson is able to make such a deep, immediate emotional connection. The supreme artistry of the song is that there appears to be no artistry involved whatsoever, and the result is a hushed glimpse directly into the singer’s soul.

And soul is a key word here - for all of Thompson’s vocals, and he is definitely a powerful (if Anglo-centrically eccentric) soul singer rest so deeply and effortlessly on his melody and lyrics that a very special kind of starkness comes breathing through which is utterly and hauntingly convincing. One cannot help but as though they were listening directly on a conduit to Thompson’s soul itself.

"When the spell is broken - When the spell is broken -." Thompson intones the fragment twice before starting into the verse proper. The first chord change, delayed so long, adds a twisted poignancy to the singer’s lament:

How you ever gonna keep her now?
You can’t cry if you don’t know how.
When the spell is broken.
When the spell is broken.
All the joy is gone from her face.
Welcome back to the human race.

The sentences are clipped and direct, each one packing its own tight little punch, which joined together serve up quite a beating indeed. "Welcome back to the human race" is such a disarming line in itself, so revelatory in its compact puncture of love’s delusion of happiness - so final, in fact - that it is surprising to hear it used as a springboard to the development of the melody, which stretches out in long, rising arches, letting Thompson’s lonely voice hang, hurt and helpless, dangling in the air before falling gradually back down to the bottom, where it began.

How long can the flame
Of love remain
When you curse and fight
And never see a light
Or hear light spoken?
When the spell is broken . . .

A huge electric wave of an open-tuned minor guitar chord washes over the refrain, as two background voices (male and female) answer back, almost mockingly in harmonized monotone - "Can’t cry if you don’t know how . Can’t cry if you don’t know how. . ."

This song is already a masterpiece. Nothing really needs to be added at this point, but merely extended. There is no climax. Or rather, perhaps the climax is reached right here, or even sooner: perhaps with the first line, or even the first chord of the song.

Thompson has created something very, very personal here, yet something completely universal. Struggling to describe it, I might call it his own personal re-creation of the blues. "When the Spell Is Broken" has all the simplicity and emotional directness of the greatest blues songs, though it is really not structured so and sounds like the blues only through analogy.
There is something in the honest, committed mastery of the music that lends the song something of the great authority that the blues carries. With a great blues singer, like Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson, or B.B. King (not to mention Hank Williams) emotes so directly that nothing stands in the way of his bared soul and the listener’s ear, the effect can be an overwhelming experience. There is no strained artistry to admire, but something shimmering, pure and human that speaks directly to the soul. And here, on this song, Thompson most perfectly achieves this effect.

For Richard Thompson, one can finally now affirm, is truly a great vocalist. After all his odd and tenuous starts with Fairport and on Henry the Human Fly, where we heard an unsteady but unique voice, through the ‘70s albums with Linda, where his rough but affecting vocals alternated so effectively with her perfectly honed instrument, here after singing in public for going on twenty years, Thompson has become a master of phrasing, of tone and breath control. Yet his greatest vocal triumph is that you believe every word he sings and that he feels each difficult, painful phrase, right down to his bare bones.

It is this remarkable singing that is the key, fusing with the simple melody and tonal structure, along with the heartbreakingly lonely words that make "When the Spell Is Broken" such an overwhelming listening experience. With this song, Thompson has crafted his own personal version of "The Thrill Is Gone," a singular and humbling accomplishment, even within the context of his own wide and varied discography.

"Can’t cry if you don’t know how" - this multi-repeated line seems to be the key to the entire predicament. Yes, we can fall back on biographical interpretation again (and we will), but one does not need to know of Thompson’s marriage self destructing to fully grasp the sense of the dilemma of love falling away. There is a long and great tradition of "losing love songs," particularly in country & western music, as well as the blues. But the dilemma is usually the departing of the loved one’s affection and the pain that it causes the lover. Here the situation is very different.

What happens when two lovers - even two partners in marriage - both fall out of love together? Or what if you are the only one? This is a human experience that is all too common, too real - and yet so mundane that it is hardly ever given any voice of expression in song or lyric. The act of falling in love - especially mutually falling in love, is an experience taken as so divine that it always will inspire great odes of rapture. For falling in love, two people discovering the oneness shared in each other is one of the most powerful experiences human life offers. It is a transforming, transcendent, mythical experience that is so difficult to put into words that it is constantly being set to the ineffable qualities of music.

But what happens when the inverse occurs? Is this loss of love a reverse-transcendent experience? Do we recede back from the beauty and joy which we have discovered back into the world of the mundane? And if so, is there a concomitant realization that what we experienced was false, just an illusion? How does the human psyche deal with the disillusion of fading love? Do we now disavow love, or do we simply recognize that it is a state which cannot be perpetually maintained, although it remains, secure in its transcendent realm, and is simply - even if temporarily - cut off from our accessibility?

In short, "is love real?" And in the great mythic heart of the devoted Sufi, Richard Thompson, "is transcendence real?"

The truth is that we do not live always in bliss - but that the potential loss of bliss is a constant state of the reality of being human. With heaven comes the possibility of hell, which is what makes all the stakes of life so vital. The problem is that not all of us are equipped to deal with it, and that mastering the great tragic sense of loss is part of developing human maturity.
This is the singer’s dilemma. He is unfamiliar with the grim realities of loss, and he is getting a hard lesson in how to deal with them. It is there in his very inability to cry that leaves him in a kind of state of suspended animation. All he has known is the bliss - and once that is gone, he feels nothing, surely a terrifying prospect.

The song leaves no sense of hope - only a strange and discomforting stasis. Does this mean that "When the Spell Is Broken" is ultimately cynical, even nihilistic? I don’t believe that is Thompson’s perspective, although emotionally where the song resides is in a kind of spiritual limbo, if not a hell. No, no one is going to fight their way out of this song, through the context of the song. One must put on additional perspectives, grow a little more, before one is able to advance. But that is perhaps the function of other songs. This song is dedicated to that one, undeniable, and often unexpected truth of the great potential of loss. And this is the song that lays the groundwork or mood for all of Across a Crowded Room.

The title of the album is taken, of course, from the lyrics of "Some Enchanted Evening," from the Broadway show South Pacific. The song deals with love at first sight: "You may see a stranger across a crowded room." The romantic epiphany of this event is celebrated, and within the context of both song and show, the result is eternal happiness: "Once you have found her, never let her go." In Thompson’s real-life nightmare becomes the haunted question, "How you ever gonna keep her now?" Indeed that is the question, as is its corollary, the unspoken "How you ever going to leave her now?"

The grim realities simply build until they are undeniable:

All your magic and your ways and schemes,
All your lies come and tear at your dreams,
When the spell is broken . . .

Now you’re handing her that same old line,
It’s just straws in the wind this time.
When love has died,
There’s none starry eyed.
No kiss, no tears,
No farewell souvenirs,
Not even a token,
When the spell is broken . . .

Thompson’s plaintive guitar solo emerges slowly out of this miasma and treads restlessly back and forth in its entrapment of non-modulation until it jumps up, double- time against the beat in a fruitless effort of high chords to break out of the grim cycle of entrapment.
One last verse remains, in which Thompson pleads with his listeners:

Don’t swear your heart
At the very start.
Love letters you wrote
Are pushed back down your throat
And leave you choking,
When the spell is broken . . .

Is caution truly the answer? Is that what is to be learned here? It is not a very convincing argument, and though the singer undoubtedly will be more wary, more cautious, the human heart will always be susceptible to new awakenings. And this of course means it will always be susceptible to new disappointments.

The singer is in no position here to get a grasp of any perspective. The song files out slowly, steadily, leaving him isolated in his limbo of non-feeling. "Can’t cry if you don’t know how," he joins in the chant. In the universe of the song, he is ever stuck in the remorseless cycle of regret and incapacity as the litany slowly, fatalistically fades away, seemingly into a forever realm of non-escape, his controlled yet impassioned guitar an Anglo-Saxon counterpoint to B.B. King.
"Welcome to my world," Richard Thompson seems to say to his audience at the opening of his new album. "I’ll show you pain that you never even knew you had." Is it really any wonder that the record didn’t go platinum?

Video - Richard Thompson: "When the Spell Is Broken"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=PED03yVaLj0

"You Don’t Say" - This extraordinary song is the perfect follow-up to the opening, and places the singer in a present-day context after getting over "the spell." It is as cold, harsh and unblinking as anything Richard Thompson has ever done, which is saying quite a lot.

This is a very nervy performance, and Thompson must have realized the effect it would have in re-focusing, re-directing attention back on himself and his breakup with Linda. Though he can disclaim biographical writing, songs like "When the Spell Is Broken," and especially "You Don’t Say" simply belie any disclaimers. That is not to say that there is not a universality to them - indeed, it is precisely in the reality and honesty of the representation of the personal that such songs find their grounding depth that can connect so powerfully with a sensitive listener.
The obvious oddness of this song is in the schematic of the singing of the verses, which is given over entirely to a female chorus. Thompson only sings on the refrains, the same ambiguous response, over and over.

The song begins with a quick, anxious chirping of electric guitar which suggests a kind of pop-rock hyperactivity, or even paranoia. It seems desperate to communicate something, but the holding, the forestalling of any development gives it a quizzical urgency that is held in abeyance.
Finally, unexpectedly, the reverb-soaked female voices enter, scatting their words quickly, like gossips in the street or unwanted whispers in the brain:

I saw your old flame
Walking down the street.
She’s back in town again,
She’s looking out for you.
She says you used her,
And you were indiscreet,
It really wounded her
When you bid adieu.

Confronted with this sudden barrage of information, accusation, recrimination, what is left for the singer to reply?

Do you mean she still cares?
Do you mean she still cares?
Do you mean she still cares?
Oh, you don’t say.

I cannot think of a comparable instance in which perspective has been twisted around in a song quite like this. The effect is shocking, so matter-of-fact in its delivery that it is simply disarming.
Thompson wrote those self-accusing lyrics and submits them to himself. Anyone with any knowledge of the breakup with Linda can clearly hear these reproofs as accurately emanating, if not from her, then from Richard’s projected psyche of his ex-wife. He can’t deny the accusations, and when he is implicitly asked for a response, there is literally nothing he can say.

Thompson sings the lines of his response without any sense of disdain - indeed, he seems genuinely touched, truly moved. He, however, has moved on with his life. What can he possibly say to meet this confrontation, either on the street or within himself? His feelings are gone, but his guilt remains. "Oh, you don’t say," simply stops the conversation in the air. It is not that he does not care, but that there is nothing he can say or do to possibly alter the reality of the circumstances.

The turning of all this emotional invective into a simple point of conversational acknowledgement is not just an act of cold dismissal - although he must be aware that it certainly comes off that way. The simple truth is that he has nothing to say to this person that is now part of his past, and he can neither deny nor defend any of the accusations hurled at him.
Thompson is absolutely ruthless with himself here. There is no soft-soaping, no self-remorse, no relenting in the dialogue directed against him: He goes out of his way to show precisely who he’s writing about and that the situation is not misrepresented:

She keeps half a ring,
She says you’ve kept the other,
She says you broke your word
When you pursue another.
She says, "You’re getting love
Mixed up with sympathy.
Young man, do your duty,
And come on back to me."

Responding simply, as before, it is clear that Thompson seeks no pity and offers no excuses for his actions. Things are precisely the way they are, and there is simply no changing them.

The question emerges as to why a writer would feel the urge to put up such blatant self-flagellation before the public? Guilt must be part of the answer. But Thompson’s casual, though sad, dismissal of his obligations to do anything risk painting himself as an utter heel. His motive must lie deeper, must lie beyond guilt, must penetrate to the very nature of his being. The song is no answer to his critics, much less his ex-wife. They seem to arise from a compulsion to be completely honest in the face of truth.

This is really rather extraordinary, when you think about it. Do we come away thinking anything good about Richard Thompson after hearing this song? Is it really enough to say, "Well, at least he can admit he’s an asshole." We still don’t wish to admire or emulate assholes, do we?

I think that the most positive thing being said in this song is precisely what is left unsaid. Richard Thompson does not have the arrogance to say, "Put yourself in my position - this could happen to you." But by placing us precisely in his position and hearing all of our faults thrown back in our face, we can begin to appreciate the common humanity and the sheer impossibility of dealing with just such a situation ourselves. Who among us hasn’t acted the bastard sometimes? Who hasn’t broken faith? Who indeed has not felt shame and regret, and yet has nothing left to do to amend it? What in the world can we say in response to our own shortcomings?
Sometimes there is simply nothing one can say - and that is precisely the point.

Video - Richard Thompson: "You Don't Say"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EKWdzeyf1-A

"I Ain’t Going to Drag My Feet No More" - This song moves the album one or two emotional steps further. Here, if we take the album as a universe in itself, rather than merely a collection of songs, the singer has moved on from his old broken romance and is ready to pursue a new relationship. "Drag My Feet" is a kind of pep talk to oneself, a pumping up resolution to go ahead and go after the girl, despite a litany of past excuses, all culminating essentially in shyness and fear of rejection.

This is a marvelously (and rare) optimistic song for Thompson, and he plies it on with great gusto and good humor. It’s in a major key with a 4/4 tempo, that pumps "whack-whack-whack" on his guitar and on the drums - which feature a delightful hesitation/tempo switch on the first chord change of each verse. It’s like a kick start in the middle of a speech to keep up the courage, to man the pace, and the accompanying accordion and saxophones remind one of the sound of the band on Hand of Kindness.

The verses extend to build in verbosity, resolution, and rapidity to open up into the chorus, in which female singers accompany the happy, almost gospel-like release that comes with self determination:

Where I come from feeling is a crime.
I thought I could take you in my own good time.
Like a jumped-up fool, now down I climb,
And I ain’t gonna drag my feet no more,
I’m running to your side, going to beat down the door.
I ain’t going to drag my feet no more, no more.

After two verses and choruses, there is a brief instrumental excursion into relative minor, with a sweetly contrasting romantic accordion lead, reminiscent of a burlesque of a Parisian love song, after which the singer returns to his self-rant, this time pushing the boundaries, pushing the meter, pushing his voice to an almost hilarious, but exhilarating pitch:

I worked my hands ‘til I couldn’t spell your name,
I rolled and roared ‘til I couldn’t see your face,
I leaned on the jukebox ‘til I couldn’t hear your voice,
Put my head in the sand, but that won’t do it -
I swore I was above you, but that won’t do it -
And I tried and I tried, but that won’t do it -
And I ain’t going to drag my feet no more . . .

The singer’s resistance is futile, so he is choosing acceptance and pursuit. He is opening up his heart and saying "yes" to love, "yes" to life. Thompson’s vocal is excitement itself, almost coming unhinged in a most endearing way. A fun, bouncy, and relatively simple guitar solo follows and plays along until the song fades.

Once cannot help but feel that this is an honest, liberating song for Thompson, and I really don’t get any sense of irony here - which, as I have noted, is a rarity.

This is a very jubilant, "up" and powerful song, and lots of fun to play and sing along with. The question still remains as to its place in what has become - and will return to be - a very bleak album.

Video - Richard Thompson: "I Ain't Going to Drag My Feet No More"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9p0zHht9rKw

"Shine On Love" - This song was not included on the original LP release of the album, and, perhaps consequently, it seems to always stick up out of place for me. This could be a trick of psychology, of course, for like "Living in Luxory" (which it somewhat resembles), there is a feeling of a B-side stuck on a CD to help flesh it out. However, while "Luxory" was tacked on to the end of Shoot Out the Lights as a pointless (and potentially anti-climactic) addendum, "Shine on Love" here appears as the fourth song in the running sequence. We must, therefore, step back a bit and think of it as a legitimate extension of the album.

Thematically, the song works beautifully as a follow-up to "Drag My Feet" - essentially a logical progression in the sequence of the romantic evolution that the album seems to be following at this point. If "Drag My Feet" was a determination to pursue love after disappointment, "Shine on Love" is right there in the heart of a blissful relationship. Hence, the movement of the previous song has been successful, and it is celebrated here.

The song begins with an accordion-led fanfare with an almost Elizabethan feel. As in "Devonshire," there is an abrupt key change as the vocal enters, though without that song’s devastating, undercutting effect. As a matter of fact, all of "Shine on Love" has a kind of formal, fanfare-like feel - which is a cue to me not to accept it at face value. Such annunciations in Thompson tend to hide something - an ironic fault that underlies the entire sentiment and structure. But I’m trying to be careful not to be too hasty in my analysis here.

Right at the opening verse, there is a specific reference back to the line, "Where I come from, feeling is a crime," from the previous songs:

When I was a boy
I was nobody’s joy,
I was guilty in love,
Guilt, guilt, guilty in love.
More fool me,
I could never see what I was guilty of.

This guilt theme about love - which we encountered in "Small Town Romance" and will surface most prominently in the later magnum opus "Can’t Win," opens questions that can’t be satisfactorily answered. But what does clearly come through is the portrait of a young man whose environment frowned upon such expressions. One could speculate on the reserved British middle-class tradition of reticence and almost Vulcan-like rationality, but this seems to be more of a setting than a key to understanding Thompson’s emotional torments. Shyness (resulting in guilt) may be simply a part of one’s nature - and Richard Thompson was a notoriously shy boy and young man - and one’s cultural environment may reinforce this without necessarily being an evil culprit at the root of heartbreak. We will see this theme widen in Thompson’s work, however, culminating, finally in the epic suburban sprawl of Mock Tudor (1991).

In this song, at any rate, the problem has ostensibly been overcome. The beginning of the second verse affirms this and leads immediately into the stately, yet celebratory chorus:

Now you steered me right,
And I’m standing in the light,
So shine on love.
Shine, shine, shine on love.
Don’t slip away,
Darkened day.
Let it shine on love,
Shine, shine shine on love.

As a male and female chorus joins in with Thompson, almost as at a church service, the sentiment is made to facile to be fully trusted. Cliched lyrics ("Like a hand in glove") make one suspicious as well.

This is not to say that "Shine on Love" is not a pretty or even a pleasant little song. It really is a kind of tasty little confection. That’s just the problem, however - if it’s truly serious, the sentiment is so slight that it cannot truly be taken too seriously.

A stately march-tempo accordion solo reinforces this notion, as the sound is reminiscent of a stately gallop of peasants going to the royal nuptial rather than a sincere outpouring of emotion. The song, while not obviously an ironist’s nasty little portrait, simply does not hold up with any sincerity.

The question, of course is did Richard Thompson plan this progression of sentiment here for overall ironic effect in the structure of the album, or does "Shine on Love" sit here on what should be the Side One of Across a Crowded Room as a quirky little aberration? (Could it even be a failed love song?)

Of course, we would not be asking this question were it not for the dichotomy of sequences between the two formats. So I think we should be cautious, at least for the moment, in making any final decisions concerning its overall relevance and meaning. Listening to the song in the context of the original LP, it may seem out of place and superfluous, taking us emotionally far afield and blurring the overall impact of the album. Any album beginning with "When the Spell Is Broken" produces a dark, spooky mood which cannot be dispelled by a "Shine on Love," and as we will see, succeeding songs will darken the vision even deeper.

Planned or not, "Shine on Love" can only be seen as a kind of ironic counterpoint if it is to work in this context at all. Its dissonant, unresolved final chord only seem to reaffirm this point of view.

"Ghosts in the Wind" - On the original LP, this was the final song on the album. I will discuss this change in format and attempt to assess its impact in my final summation of the album.
"Ghosts in the Wind" is one of the starkest, most hauntingly beautiful and lonely things that Richard Thompson has ever put on record - which is saying quite a lot.

The song is very simple in structure, for the most part built around only two chords, with just a few changes at the refrain. Thompson’s finger-picked open acoustic guitar alone is enough to set a breathtakingly haunted mood. This would become, indeed, one of the singer’s most effective solo pieces, but the added instruments and production techniques both enhance the overall effect of the song and connect it marvelously with the sound of the album established on "When the Spell Is Broken."

Thompson’s voice is soaked in reverb, and it carries the sound of a damaged soul, fully inhabiting the bleak melody and lyrics:

Did you call my name?
Did you call my name in the night?
In the whispers and sighs,
In the whispers and sighs of the night?
Ah, ghosts in the wind . . .

There is a spooky feel reminiscent of "Ghost Riders in the Sky," but more introspective, more elusive here. Thompson’s sliding electric guitar fills the blend, along with a deep, jazzy bass and the sporadic crashing of echo-drenched drums and cymbals that help reinforce the sense of stasis. Eventually is added a kind of hum that suggests some kind of electronic equivalent of a bagpipe drone over which the entire song seems to hover.

The theme of loss and abandonment is amplified and expanded upon here in brief, subtle images:

Now this old house moves,
This old house moves and moans.
The tongues of the night,
The tongues of the night stir my bones.

The image of the empty house at night could well be the emptiness of the singer’s soul. The movements and sounds are his memories of a love lost, and these shadows grow until they are seemingly all that is left of the singer’s psyche. It is a dramatic moment when the long-delayed chord changes come about, and the singer departs to ask his single forlorn question:

When will my sore heart ever mend?

But this does not pull us out of the haunted shell of the song, but merely allows us to scrape the edge, as the return to solidity of the enclosing chords make clear.

The song has a natural partnership to "When the Spell Is Broken," both thematically and tonally. Here the "spell" is the song itself. And rather than being an illusion of bliss, this spell is an all-encompassing void, the emptiness that remains long after a relationship has soured and ended.

Thompson will return again and again to the image of an individual as a haunted being in songs such as "Uninhabited Man" and "The Ghost of You Walks." Here, there is something unnervingly real in the starkness image and palpable sound of loneliness and deathless loss. It is a sound and a feeling that is simply too stark, too real to describe adequately. Thompson sounds like a lonely ghost singing it, and it is one of those rare and tremendous performances that sounds as though the singer/player must be living it, inhabiting it. It is this utter lack of any sense feigning that goes to reinforce the notion that he must be singing about himself, from his very soul.

I want to try to avoid moving back into autobiographical territory here. And indeed, we do not need to. "Ghosts in the Wind" is the result of great artistry as well as great personal sensitivity. Plus, the depth of feeling that comes across can easily (inevitably?) be placed in context with the terrain mapped out in rest of the album so far, especially the first two songs.

Thompson begins a stark, yet jittery electric guitar solo that takes over where his voice left off. Playing inside and outside of the two chords he has set up, the simplicity and sadness of the piece produces a very personalized equivalent of the blues. This, indeed, could be B.B. King or Eric Clapton territory - not to mention Robert Johnson himself - but with little or no reference to the traditional pentatonic blues scale. The emotional resonance is the same, however.

Thompson returns for the last verse:

I’m empty and cold,
Empty and cold like a ruin.
The wind tears through me,
The wind tears through me like a ruin.

The word "ruin" intensifies the meaning of the self as "house." As he repeats the refrain, the singer seems to disappear, vanishing like dust on the windy desert floor. The guitar returns and rides the song out, seemingly replacing whatever was human there with a strange, searching presence that continues until the entire piece fades away into silence.

Thus, "Ghosts in the Wind" turns into a kind of vanishing act, as both singer and song gradually fade and disappear. Here we have one of Thompson’s most moving and terrifying feats to date, and his lonesome howl leaves a lasting echo in our consciousnesses long after he is gone.

Can a person simply wither and die, disappear like a ghost, through the haunting of memory and time? This song not only suggests it, but manifestly demonstrates it and proves it to the listener.
"Ghosts in the Wind" is another unqualified great song by Richard Thompson, and as undying a testimony to his greatness as an artist as you are likely to find anywhere.

"Fire in the Engine Room" - Side two of the LP opens with this breakneck rocker, a desperate runaway train of speed and paranoia. Driven by a reckless hard guitar riff, doubled by saxophones, this is an extended metaphor of jealousy.

If one is attempting to follow Across a Crowded Room as a kind of narrative (ignoring "Ghosts in the Wind" for the moment), we could say that this is the beginning of the crisis point of the new relationship that was picked up on "I Ain’t Going to Drag My Feet No More" and "Shine on Love." The broken past of the old relationship of "When the Spell Is Broken" and "You Don’t Say" is here beginning to repeat itself. This interpretation of the album suggests problems as internal universals that play themselves out, over and over, throughout successive relationships, no matter who is involved.

I am not here attempting to establish that this kind of schematic reading of the album is what Thompson intended, but it can easily be read that way. Perhaps in the end, it doesn’t really matter - the songs reflect back and forth on each other no matter what order you put them in, and the end result is a rather disturbing view of human relationships, no matter how you look at it.

"Fire in the Engine Room" is one of those unique kind of Richard Thompson songs that seems to be injecting humor in the nightmare through a kind of musical and verbose overstatement. The song is, indeed, a kind of fun rush to listen to, with its breathless, compulsive opening:

Well, Luke told Danny, Danny told Betsy,
Betsy told me, and I’m telling you,
You better stop doing the things you do,
There’s a fire in the engine room, fire in the engine room.

The singer’s source of anxiety comes from a fourth-hand source, which of course suggests that it comes more from in himself than anywhere else. The mad images keep coming, along with the relentless propulsion of the song:

She’s making eyes with the fool with the shovel,
That son of a grease-gun must be insane.
I hose it down and he fans the flames . . .

The paranoid visions are beginning to take physical form born from the images of his own metaphor. This guy is losing it, and losing it fast. The singer sees himself as a marked man:

It must be the head-hunting season,
And there’s room in the old trophy room.

And:

And you know how uncertainty can linger
With a rattlesnake wrapped around your finger,
One day it may wake up and sting you.
Here’s a toast to the bride and the groom.

In this scenario, any relationship is doomed. The singer’s obsession is self-fulfilling - if his jealousy does not bring about infidelity, it is at least going to sow alienation and possibly reap an inevitable sundering.

This leads us to a kind of conundrum about the relationship of the writer to the content of the song. Thompson is here being satirical, of course - he knows precisely what the singer’s problem is, but that does not dispel the question as to his own guilt in the attitude portrayed. This is, of course, something we cannot possibly ever know - unless Thompson were to inform us that he was being self-mocking here. This is a question that will become increasingly complex in analyzing Thompson’s work - when is he pointing a finger at himself, and when is he merely harpooning another?

We get even less help from the performance - Thompson plays and sings with such passion and conviction that it is impossible to tell whether he means what he says or is simply parodying it. And of course, that’s one of the most exciting wonders of his best work. Thompson creates impossible situations - situations he knows are absurd - then thrusts himself into the center of them. Is he holding himself up for self crucifixion? Is his ultimate target himself?

(A great comparison would be to a later jealousy song, "Don’t Tempt Me," which is even more ridiculously obsessive than this one. There, the jealous martyr - also presented in first person - is mocked beyond belief. But the insanity of the protagonist is so intense that it seems impossible not to be a self-indictment.)

Whether serious, half-serious or not, "Fire in the Engine Room" is a roughneck, welcome addition to a collection of songs questioning the impossibility of relationships. It is beginning to become a very crowded room, indeed.

Video - Richard Thompson: "Fire in the Engine Room"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=zaacRvnPoV8

"Walking Through a Wasted Land" - Here Thompson takes the wasteland of the soul and enlarges the vision to a portrait of contemporary England. Though he does not mention Margaret Thatcher by name, it is recognizably the wrecked landscape of her reign to which he alludes. The song resonates with the kind of passion of economic decline that filled Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. album of the previous year:

Sweat is the name of this town,
It’s an ugly old, dirty old disgrace
And now that the steel’s shut down,
It’s fear that puts the sweat in a man’s face.

Instead of Springsteen’s empathy and sadness, however, Thompson’s vision is filled with bile and disgust. Probably, this is not an exclusively political song - it is a larger picture of a country that has lost its soul. "Where is the future we planned?" calls out this aging baby-boomer’s disappointment in any sense of youthful idealism he once maintained.

The song itself is an angry stomper, a march ("Walk down!") through a country for which he probably has no more use or desire left. It contains one of his angriest, most stinging guitar solos yet, and the defiant accordion and blazing saxophones give a kind of triumphantly angry glory to his denunciation.

The song may not be profound - it is not one of Thompson’s best. But it does help flesh out the theme of desolation that the album is painting to give it a larger, more universal nature, and the tough anger of the piece adds to the record’s sense of aggressive hard rock in its texture. It fits well here, and moves the album along quite nicely.

"Little Blue Number" - Here we have what will become one of Thompson’s specialties - a blistering tale of astonishment over something so outrageous that lets him pull out all the verbal stops. If "Walking Through a Wasted Land" is Thompson’s disappointment with the old, "Little Blue Number" is his shock of the new. Like "A Bone Through Her Nose," that will kick off his next album, Thompson is sent into hilarious verbal spasms over a female’s appearance. Yes, partly, this reveals a conservative nature, but as such a brilliant innovator in a traditionalist’s garb, he seems to earn the right to get fed up.

At any rate, the lyrics are so funny and exaggerated, the thrust of the song so wickedly fun-rocking, that you can’t help but love it. Basically, "Little Blue Number" is a workout in the tradition of Chuck Berry’s "Too Much Monkey Business," which was later transformed into Bob Dylan’s surreal take on modern culture in "Subterranean Homesick Blues." This is Thompson’s own private appropriation of the tradition, and whenever he applies this technique, it is always, uniquely and hilariously his. With his remarkable play with words and daft sound of astonishment, he comes off not like an old fogey, but rather like perhaps the last sensible man on earth:

Where did you get that little blue number?
How do you make those rhinestones shine?
Do you go on the prowl while other folks slumber?
Did you steal those things right off of the line?
Hold, your horses, that’s something of mine!
That little blue number, little blue number . . .

Thompson’s guitar solo bends like a country pedal steel, and in fact the entire song sounds like it could be a country & western stomp, were it not for the bagpipe sounds and Thompson’s northern English accent. This is another unique type of fusion at which he is so proficient (see "Tear Stained Letter," among many others), and the end result is something quite unique.
"Little Blue Number" once again expands the album’s theme and texture, and after these brief excursions into different modes of alienation, Thompson is set to return to the central theme of the agonizing impossibility of human relationships.

Video - Richard Thompson: "Little Blue Number"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=SQ1KItC80FA

"She Twists the Knife Again" - In a more perfect world, this would be a universally known, well-loved part of the rock ‘n’ roll repertoire, blazing in the collective conscious alongside such other demented masterpieces as the Stones’ "19th Nervous Breakdown," the Who’s "I Can See for Miles," Talking Heads’ "Psycho Killer," and everything on Elvis Costello’s first three albums.
Going past the satirically humorous sado-masochistic text, the song spills over into real (and scary) emotional territory and Thompson just pulls out the stops to deliver one of the greatest horrific rock anthems of all time. Yes, this should have been a hit in any era, and it is so gripping that you can’t help but punch the repeat button and jump out of your chair.

It is emblematic of Thompson to grow from a lyrically extreme position and have the subtext of the song spill over directly to hit an open nerve, and that is precisely what "Twists the Knife" does. The rocking, charging hook of electric guitar and drums is so powerful and committed that it sucks the listener in from the instant it begins. Then begins Thompson’s lament:

I keep my nose clean, I keep my speech plain,
I keep my promises, she twists the knife again.
I shut my memory, I close my eyes and then
She takes another bite, she twists the knife again.

The effect of these lyrics is a brutal attack. The words stab like little knives in themselves, piercing and relentless. In the beautiful transition to the chorus, there is no respite, just a hurt-dog memory of abuses:

She never leaves me my dignity,
Makes a dunce of me in mixed company,
No bygone can be a bygone,
She throws the spanner in,
She puts the screws on.

At the point of the chorus, the song seems to lose control, turning into an hysterical scream for help:

In the middle of a kiss, she twists the knife again.
When I get up off my knees, she twists the knife again.
When I think I’m off the hook, she gets me,
She twists the knife again!
She twists the knife again!

Rarely do the words and music of a song come together so perfectly that they seem to be one organism, a single blade, if you will. They emphatically do here.

The most amazing thing about "She Twists the Knife Again," however is the frightening conviction of its performance. Thompson does not have to resort to any vocal histrionics - just his singing puts the message across so forcefully that there is absolutely no question that he means every word he is saying in this pastiche.

"Who is he singing about?" We don’t even have time to wonder at this before the image of Linda pops in our minds. Is this about his ex-wife? Is it his excuse - or perhaps is it his guilt? There’s no way to know, and finally, we must concede that the question is simply irrelevant. What he is singing is very real, however, and any of us who have ever felt hopelessly entangled in a no-win situation will attest that he seems to be channeling our own nervous systems.

I suppose you could say that "Twists the Knife" is the crisis point of the entire album, whether we follow a schematic pathway or not. In whatever relationship he finds himself, old or new, this is the howling of a man totally entrapped. There’s no way out of this hell - even sundering such a relationship leaves the psychic wounds that one will carry on into any future experience. As a matter of fact, "She Twists the Knife Again" could easily be about a relationship that is already over. Guilt scars deep - and the attack (as well as the song itself) is completely relentless:

I make my moves well, I let her tell me when,
I walk a fine line, she twists the knife again.
Just when the scar heals, just when the grip unbends,
That’s when her mind reels, she twists the knife again.

She can give it out, she can’t take it,
She smells something bad, she has to rake it.
I bring home my packet, my white-collar money,
I’m in a fist fight, she thinks she’s Gene Tunney.

Even the silly humor of such an unlikely reference as this now-obscure boxer does not blunt the blows of the song. It remains magnificently, scarifyingly real. All humor here is pure gallows - a defensive move to keep one’s sanity under such mental abuse.

Thompson’s guitar begins a repeated phrase, stepping down in repeat during each measure, as if he was slowly being pushed down, ground into the dirt. When he finally does let loose, he soars into crying, out-of-harmony excursion of which we have not heard the like since "Shoot Out the Lights." He does not remain long here, however, but is quickly pulled back into the trapped wheel of the chorus. For an ending, all he can muster is the charged repeat:

She twists the knife again!
She twists the knife again!
She twists the knife again!

followed by a sudden silence that is all too final.

It is precisely this type of song that drives Richard Thompson fans insane - you want to talk to your new fellow-music fanatics, and all you receive is a "Who?" "God-damn it," you want to scream. "Listen to this! I lived through this!"

Video - Richard Thompson: "She Twists the Knife Again"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5g2rABfoV4M

Video - Richard Thompson performs "She Twists the Knife Again" solo
http://youtube.com/watch?v=uILkhhMwg48&feature=related

"Love in a Faithless Country" - The CD version of Across a Crowded Room ends with this, one of Richard Thompson’s strangest and most threatening-sounding songs ever. (Which is saying quite a bit.)

It begins with a dissonant, trebly guitar arpeggio just hanging in space, dangling. Even as Thompson’s voice enters and the song proper begins, "Love in a Faithless Country" seems to float, ungrounded, almost suspended in time. A restless bass moves up and down, as scattered drums punctuate certain spare points.

The spare melody is almost a bi-tonal chant, moving slowly, back and forth from a pivot point between two clashing chords. Thompson’s voice is ominous and hollow. The lyrics seem to be giving instructions for actions during wartime:

Always move in pairs and travel light.
A loose friend is an enemy, keep it tight.
Always leave a job the way you found it.
Look for trouble coming and move around it.

The music trails off and time, for a brief eternity, seems to hang totally in suspension.
Suddenly there is the brutal crashing of an electric guitar chord in savage minor, and hard, echo-riddled drums hold a slow beat. Thompson begins to chant the chorus:

That’s the way we make love.
That’s the way we make love.
That’s the way we make love.

This sudden and jarring juxtaposition between apparently differing subject matters contains a powerful mental and emotional jolt. This song has departed even further from dichotomies first laid out so powerfully and strangely in "The Calvary Cross." Here, love is depicted as a battlefield - a strange, barren landscape of deadly and cautious motions, requiring extraordinary vigilance, grounded in a knowing fear and dread.

This is perhaps the bleakest that Thompson has ever gotten in detailing affairs of the heart. The song makes no apparent effort to reconcile or explain the relationship between apparently incongruous verses and chorus, no attempt to justify the pronunciation of the assertion that love is a dangerous, violent game. The simple assertion of the chorus, combined with the huge, ominous sound of the instrumentation are enough to convince - or at least confound - the listener.

"Love in a Faithless Country" is a bold experiment, and one that lays Thompson open to criticism not of morbidity, but of the aesthetic and emotional justification of such morbidity. Here, like "The End of the Rainbow," one can easily charge that Thompson is simply going too far. The riposte here, as there, is finally that in this song, like the other, Thompson is painting a picture of a shattered psyche. Indeed, it is even a more justifiable interpretation in this sense, as the entire world of the song is ultimately related back to the first-person (plural).

Personal experience and individual emotional perspectives are difficult to criticize, but they depend for their effectiveness upon the listener’s sensitivity, as well as the capacity of the artist to convincing express his unique point of view. The answer will vary from person to person, but the basic question is whether Thompson’s construction is adequate to the task of making a convincing case of such an extreme position. In short, does he present an honest nightmare or just a ridiculous grotesquery?

There are two ways to answer this question, and two ways to test the result. First of all, there is the question of the power of the musical construction, the recording in itself - is "Faithless Country" strong enough to convince on its own? And secondly - and perhaps more importantly here - is the question of whether the larger context - the album as a whole - works to support such an imposing edifice.

We will return to the question of context in a moment. For myself, I believe that this is a supreme example of an extreme piece of art or communication that relies upon its context - the album at large for its effectiveness. An album that has established itself so firmly with such haunting and convincing masterpieces as "When the Spell Is Broken" and "She Twists the Knife Again" has eminently established itself as such a unique artifact that an experiment as extreme as "Faithless Country" has not only earned its right for our attention, but makes a bold claim for us to take its extremities seriously.

But let us return to the song proper. After the initial chorus, the song pauses and hovers before moving into the second verse:

Always make your best moves late at night.
Always keep your tools well out of sight.
It never pays to work the same town twice.
It never hurts to be a little nice.

The lyrics leave the activities being undertaken very ambiguous, though there is no question that they are dark and are directed towards actions of a surreptitious, if not even criminal nature. The advices given are instructions for paranoiacs, frighteningly vague and knowingly ominous. The choice of advices is very interesting, seeming cliches of strategy from a seasoned practitioner to a novice. After finishing the fourth line, the music stops and hovers once again before crashing back into the chorus:

That’s the way we make love . . .

The song begins to take on more power here, and it is largely due to the insistent incongruity of the singer chanting this mantra over and over that helps to make the song become compelling and believable. The sound is intense, the voice dead serious. It is becoming more disturbingly obvious that the singer is speaking from direct personal experience, and that it is the authenticity of this experience that allows him to speak so authoritatively, and hence, chillingly.

The strangeness of the song builds, in other words, giving it more power as it continues. The very obsessiveness of it is a kind of testimony to its authenticity. Plus, the lyrics of the verses are becoming a little clearer in their relationship to the chorus - they are beginning to sound more and more like internal instructions for maintaining a relationship than disconnected metaphors.

If this is meant as serious advice from a lover, then it helps to recognize him as the poor protagonist of "She Twists the Knife Again" who simply cannot win, no matter what or how he behaves. He is speaking hard-won, but apparently doomed lessons that have taught him how to survive in an ultimately unmanageable situation.

The advices are, on one level, sickly reasonable, even in their (clearly) dysfunctional context:

1) Always make your best moves late at night. - This is a strategy of timing, looking for the point at which the other party is at its weakest and least resistant.

2) Always keep your tools well out of sight. - Whatever emotional techniques you employ for manipulation must not be visible or known to the other party.

3) It never pays to work the same town twice. - This could refer either to using the same emotional techniques in the same way, or even to never attempt them with the same person.

4) It never hurts to be a little nice. - This one, the most chilling of all the machinations, reveals that there is fundamentally a deceptive play going on - and a wide divergence between the actions and the feelings underneath. It reveals the ulterior motive, whatever that is, as clearly separate from surface actions. A reminder to be "nice" to a lover or potential lover seems to be the ultimate revelation of a subterfuge of depthless proportions.

As the chanting of the chorus makes clear exactly what we are talking about here, it also locates it specifically in the relationship between the singer and his partner. "That’s the way we make love" suggests a kind of unspoken agreement between two willing participants in a relationship of manipulation and struggle for dominance.

Another reading, however, could suggest that the "we" intended is both the singer and ourselves - that is, this is a larger observation about the duplicity of the entire human species when it comes to matters of the heart.

Whether this meaning is intended or not, it is certainly there for the taking. If we protest that our actions in love are not stealthily selfish and calculated like this - that we are perhaps more authentic than the portrait being painted here, I think it is also an admission of honesty that we all do indeed - to some degree, practice various types of calculated behavior modification to get what we want. The question here is of degree - and from the perspective of the song, it is this base calculation that is being highlighted, so that it becomes the all-in-all of the relationship.
Can we presume that Richard Thompson feels that this is his essential nature because of this song? I think that is going too far. Just because one can locate a tendency or a fault in oneself and is honest enough to throw light on it, then it becomes, spatially centered in art, so to speak, the defining characteristic of that work of art. And seen from the perspective of that art, the rest of life seems fractured and insincere. This is one of the great roles and functions of art - by shifting our perspectives just enough, we can look at imbalances that we usually repress in order to return to a more truly informed, balanced perspective that humanizes us.

That is not to suggest that art is a panacea, or even that we should use it as a prescription for keeping ourselves emotionally healthy. But if art is to do anything useful at all, it is to place us in a unique mode of perspective that will alter the way in which we view things, one way or another. For art is not merely entertainment - it is discovery, a discovery of hitherto unexamined possibilities of perspective.

This, of course, is one of Richard Thompson’s specialties, particularly in the lyrical construction of his songs. Thompson, at least since Henry the Human Fly, has always sought to distort our visions of reality, to make us see things at least slightly askew. What he is practicing more clearly, here, in the burgeoning of his "solo career" is a transformation of himself into the subject of his inquiry. If he distorts himself, it is to gain wisdom through honest inspection - and if that self-inspection becomes infectious, he his doing a very good job indeed.

Across a Crowded Room, like Hand of Kindness before it, can be seen as a brave journey through this personal odyssey, both coming in the wake of the explosive self-deconstructions of Shoot Out the Lights. It is almost as if we are playing with the debris left over from that enormous explosion, still trying to patch together and make sense of it all.

If "Love in a Faithless Country" is a description of Thompson’s relationship with his ex-wife (as many listeners will assume, and the context of Across a Crowded Room in general will certainly attest (see "You Don’t Say"), it is not strictly - or even primarily - limited to that. The breakdown of that marriage - and more importantly, the mythical document of that breakdown, the transcendently horrifying revelations of Shoot Out the Lights itself - is best seen as the foregrounding for Thompson’s work here. Were he simply documenting his own personal problems, the songs here would not have the kind of resonance that they have. The fact is, that these are universal songs, though songs not rarely written or heard, and it is the grounding of those songs in the reality of the artist’s personal experience that lends them such an authoritative sense of power.

To return to the song, it begins to become more clear as it progresses just from where "Love in a Faithless Country" derives its sense of authenticity. And it does so artfully, which is only natural. In the second chorus, Thompson injects a "response chorus" of heavily echoed female voices, whose own chanting is difficult to understand, but is clearly a female correlative to his own perspective and voice. Perhaps the difficulty in understanding the words of this chorus is intentionally devised to highlight the inaccessibility of the essence of the fundamental other in a relationship - and consequently, what mechanisms she is devising, and for what purpose. In fact, the choral responses, seem strangely to emanate (as they actually do) from the singer’s own subconscious.

The rhythm tightens up briefly, and Thompson moves into a guitar solo that takes us further and further afield in an inspired blend of passion and technical virtuosity that is astonishing even from him. The use of the harmonic materials contained in the two unresolved chords of the chorus creates a fantastic fabric that looms frighteningly like the score of some horror film of the mind, and when the more stable chords of the chorus come back around, the perpetual, questing action which has been set in motion is unresolved, chiefly through the use of quick rhythmic variations and surprise climaxes that finally melt back away to the hushed, sustained mystery of the initial, hung arpeggio with which the song began. Underneath this, the female chorus goes on with its incoherent chanting, casting an impenetrable spell until all ceases completely, and this nightmare of a song is ready to continue.

The guitar solo is an important point, not only in this song, but in Richard Thompson’s music in general. Thompson is such a brilliantly virtuostic musician, and his playing is of such superb intelligence and power, that he could be (and perhaps should be) known primarily as a guitar player. This has never been Thompson’s methodology, however - he has always put the song first. His guitar playing remains, just for this reason, ever a kind of secret weapon. No matter how familiar we become with him, it is still a shock when he rips into a majestically authoritative solo such as this, thus stamping the song with a kind of supernal power that not only validates, but exceeds anything the song is already attempting to deliver.

It is my perception that as soon as the guitar solo has completed, "Love in a Faithless Country" is absolutely justified as a sincere emotional expression as both a song and a performance. There appears nothing false or conceited about it at this point. The guitar solo has hammered down the intent, criticism is disarmed, and we are ready to proceed to the end.

The final verse:

Learn the way to melt into a crowd,
Never catch an eye or dress too loud,
You’ve got to be invisible my friend
To find the joy on which we must depend.

Admonishes the singer (and presumably us) to recede into the background, to keep unnoticed, "invisible." This willful repression of the personal self, this unnatural stealth, it is argued, is necessary, both for protection and for the attainment of the ultimate goal: "the joy on which we must depend." We presume this "joy" is sexual, but the implications need not stop there. If we are looking for emotional compensation and security beyond the mere physical need, we must, to some degree, remain duplicitous, play a role, if we are not to give ourselves - and our secret intentions - away to our intended lover(s).

As unnatural and sick as this sounds, this is not unfamiliar advice. Just consult any dating guide to discover how to behave as to maximize one’s chances with the member of the opposite sex. It is cultural common knowledge to feign "naturalness," a truly perverse notion once one begins to think of it, to have success with seduction. Placed in these terms, however, and in the context of this music, the subterfuge becomes eerily redolent of the maliciousness of a stalker. And thoroughly speaking, what exactly is the difference?

As the chorus storms malevolently out into infinity, it is first joined, then finally superceded by the guitar again as Thompson plaintively chants "Love, love, love." The song builds to its climax, then ultimately breaks down, leaving only the dangling notes of the opening chord and the eerie, unintelligible chant of the female chorus, sounding strangely like a demonic church litany.

It is finally clear that the "Faithless Country" is not located anywhere geographically, but is centered in the false parts of the human soul, which has been so manipulated and broken apart by fear that stealth and deception have become absolute necessities. And it is here, on this hellish revelation that Across a Crowded Room finally ends - resting uneasily on that last unresolved chord, dangling on a precipice.

Video - Richard Thompson: "Love in a Faithless Country"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=dPI54pmDU7c

But should it?

I began my discussion of Across a Crowded Room by pointing out the discrepancy between the sequencing of the CD and the original LP format. Unquestionably, "Love in a Faithless Country" derives part of its power and authority by its inclusion on this album - and the album gains strength from the song. But sequencing is very important - it is a very tricky business, not just from an emotional perspective, but the placement of a song on an album can alter the meaning of both the song and the whole, just as a scene in a movie can alter both meaning and impact, depending on when it is placed.

On the original release of the album, this was the sequencing:

Side One
"When the Spell Is Broken"
"You Don’t Say"
"I Ain’t Going to Drag My Feet No More"
"Love in a Faithless Country"

Side Two
"Fire in the Engine Room"
"Walking Through a Wasted Land"
"Little Blue Number"
"She Twists the Knife Again"
"Ghosts in the Wind"

I have gone back and programmed my CD to play the songs in this sequence, and I find it infinitely preferable to the way that they are arranged on the disc. Of course, it is shorter (no "Shine on Love"), and the sequence is obviously, inextricably linked to the LP format for which it was originally devised.

The first big change is the sudden appearance of "Love in a Faithless Country" as the fourth track. There is a strangeness and a kind of disruption of having this monster of a track appear so early. It functions to both wipe out what came before it (particularly "I Ain’t Going to Drag My Feet No More"), and to sum up and contextualize the entire first side. Situated here, the song seems less a summation of the album than a temporary resting place - a limbo, rather than a hell - before moving on into new territory. The implications are different - the repeats of "That’s the way we make love" sound less final, and the ending of the side leaves us in a state of abeyance that keeps us dangling until the record is turned over.

The effect of the songs leading off side two is dramatic. Emerging from the context of the big, hollow void of "Faithless Country," "Fire in the Engine Room" takes on a new urgency, as if there were a rushed energy to try to identify and fix the problems at all costs. "Walking Through a Wasted Land" stomps in mock defiance and "Little Blue Number" takes on a maniacal fury that is given new life by the momentum created by the disruption and re-start provided by making "Faithless Country" the centerpiece, rather than the conclusion, of the album. Everything seems to matter more, more is at stake, once that song has been heard.

"She Twists the Knife Again" takes on new meaning as the climax of the album, with emotional situations taken to their most extreme. There seems to be an organic growth from the middle of the album to this point, and there is no big "topper" that one has to follow when one has to get through after the catharsis of this extraordinarily propulsive song.

Instead, we conclude with the wistful, haunting grace of "Ghosts in the Wind," which is emotionally much more satisfying as a release, as well as a much more profound philosophical conclusion to the album. Instead of everything feeling so bottom heavy, as it sits on the CD, it opens out, letting things be what they are in a wisely weary gesture of letting go.

Indeed, "Ghosts in the Wind" takes us full circle, back to the brooding, beautiful opening of "When the Spell Is Broken," emotionally and texturally reminding us of that haunting, doomed beauty that opened the album to begin with. Ending with "Faithless Country" essentially choked off anything that came before it - along with stamping a damning finality on the album. In this configuration, where "Faithless Country" serves as an interruptus, we can finally sail out of the world of the album with a kind of spooky ambivalence (and acceptance) that feels ultimately more satisfying, tying the entire collection of songs together.

Apparently Thompson (if he had any input into the decision) agreed, and the original CD format which I still possess has gone out of print. In the re-release on the British BGO (Beat Goes On) label, the CD reverted back to the original LP format. It is currently only available as an import in the United States, and it is hopeful that if it is picked up and re-released in America, that this will be the sequence retained, perhaps with "Shine on Love" (among others?) as a bonus track.

No matter how you get it, however, Across a Crowded Room is absolutely indispensable to an understanding and appreciation of Richard Thompson, particularly as a signpost for the direction of his solo career. Finally told, this is as moving and coherent (and disturbing) album as Thompson has ever done, and one in which his search to define love in the aftermath of disaster, to pick up the pieces of left from the shatters off the past before heading off in search of new directions.

And no one should be without "When the Spell Is Broken" or "She Twists the Knife Again," which do not appear on any of his compilations. For that reason alone, Across a Crowded Room is absolutely essential in any music collection whatsoever.

Small Town Romance

Richard Thompson: Small Town Romance [1984]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Video - Richard Thompson Performs "Honky Tonk Blues"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A perfect rejoinder would be Ray Davies’ sublime couplet:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who is Thompson addressing here?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thompson stays resolute through to the end:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Hand of Kindness

Richard Thompson: Hand of Kindness [June 1983]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What a way to kick off a solo career!

Video - Richard Thompson: "Tear Stained Letter"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The repeated chorus of the song:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You’re listening to the wrong heartbeat . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He makes this more explicit:

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

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

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

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

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

All his subsequent career validates our trust.

Video - Richard Thompson: "The Hand of Kindness"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The final verse:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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