Album review: Richard Thompson, 'Dream Attic'
3.5 stars (out of 4)
Since the ‘60s, when he helped Fairport Convention fuse rock and British folk music, Richard Thompson has been one of our time’s mightiest guitar gunslingers. His style is rarely predictable, making connections to bagpipe drone, free-jazz harmonics and psychedelic studio effects (pretty cool how he can sound like he’s playing a “backward” solo while going full speed ahead).
But he’s relatively under-celebrated as a great soloist, in part because he puts an equal if not greater premium on songwriting, often muting his instrumental capabilities to serve his literate, lacerating songs. At times this has led to albums that can appear a little dry, easy to respect but short on the kind of goosebump-inducing peaks he’s capable of conjuring in concert.
With “Dream Attic” (Shout! Factory), he attacked that problem by recording his latest batch of originals on the road with his touring band. Coincidental or not, the setting opens things up considerably for Thompson the guitarist, his songs gaining an immediacy and intensity that sometimes gets refined away in his sometimes too-careful studio recordings.
The songs have an edge to them, as well, as he skewers shifty financiers in “The Money Shuffle” and Sting in “Here Comes Geordie” (“Good old Geordie, righteous as can be/Cut down the forest just to save a tree”). “Sidney Wells” is another Thompson character study that leaves a trail of blood in its wake. Though the saxophone solos should’ve been skipped, Thompson’s pliable quintet is generally in good form, slipping confidently into various guises (folk-based ballads and elegies, roadhouse rockers, shape-shifting epics). But it’s really an album about Thompson and his ability to turn traditional notions of a guitar solo inside out. He comes across as a cool head in his narratives and meditations, but his reserve boils over when his hands touch the strings. Soft-spoken resolve erupts with a vengeance on “If Love Whispers Your Name,” the clinical detail of “Crimescene” turns into a flashback of mayhem, and the dark humor of “Bad Again” breaks into a room-wrecking romp. “I’m bad again,” Thompson exults, and that’s reason to celebrate.
greg@gregkot.com
Since the ‘60s, when he helped Fairport Convention fuse rock and British folk music, Richard Thompson has been one of our time’s mightiest guitar gunslingers. His style is rarely predictable, making connections to bagpipe drone, free-jazz harmonics and psychedelic studio effects (pretty cool how he can sound like he’s playing a “backward” solo while going full speed ahead).
But he’s relatively under-celebrated as a great soloist, in part because he puts an equal if not greater premium on songwriting, often muting his instrumental capabilities to serve his literate, lacerating songs. At times this has led to albums that can appear a little dry, easy to respect but short on the kind of goosebump-inducing peaks he’s capable of conjuring in concert.
With “Dream Attic” (Shout! Factory), he attacked that problem by recording his latest batch of originals on the road with his touring band. Coincidental or not, the setting opens things up considerably for Thompson the guitarist, his songs gaining an immediacy and intensity that sometimes gets refined away in his sometimes too-careful studio recordings.
The songs have an edge to them, as well, as he skewers shifty financiers in “The Money Shuffle” and Sting in “Here Comes Geordie” (“Good old Geordie, righteous as can be/Cut down the forest just to save a tree”). “Sidney Wells” is another Thompson character study that leaves a trail of blood in its wake. Though the saxophone solos should’ve been skipped, Thompson’s pliable quintet is generally in good form, slipping confidently into various guises (folk-based ballads and elegies, roadhouse rockers, shape-shifting epics). But it’s really an album about Thompson and his ability to turn traditional notions of a guitar solo inside out. He comes across as a cool head in his narratives and meditations, but his reserve boils over when his hands touch the strings. Soft-spoken resolve erupts with a vengeance on “If Love Whispers Your Name,” the clinical detail of “Crimescene” turns into a flashback of mayhem, and the dark humor of “Bad Again” breaks into a room-wrecking romp. “I’m bad again,” Thompson exults, and that’s reason to celebrate.
greg@gregkot.com