Richard Thompson - Electric

180-gram limited edition double LP

Richard Thompson's latest album, Electric, produced by Buddy Miller, comes in what is arguably his most creatively productive period in a career that stretches back some 45 years, back to his emergence as a teen guitarist and songwriter with the groundbreaking Fairport Convention — the band that essentially invented the term "English folk-rock." And that's saying a lot, with his dozens of albums consistently high on critics polls and guitar skills that have earned him a Top 20 spot on Rolling Stone's list of Best Guitarists of All Time.

Thompson's many facets only seem to get more, well, multifaceted. And multi-fascinating. The recognition continues and has become even stronger in the last few years: his long-acclaimed guitar work-piercing, delicate, often both at once-brought him MOJO magazine's Les Paul Award; his equally gripping songwriting earned him the 2012 Americana Music Association's Lifetime Achievement Award, presented to him by Bonnie Raitt, and Britain's coveted Ivor Novello Award; and he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Aberdeen University in his ancestral Scotland. Oh, and there was that Order of the British Empire (OBE), bestowed upon him by Queen Elizabeth for service to music, summing up the whole artistic package.

On Thompson's new album, pointedly titled Electric, all of his experience is boiled down to its intense essence. There is a decidedly full-contact quality to his music and words, as always.

"The title's Electric, and the music sometimes is," he says.

Mostly electric, to be accurate, and always electrifying. Whether featuring electric or acoustic guitar, the songs are built around the tightly focused core of Thompson's current, sharply honed trio: Drummer Michael Jerome (Better Than Ezra, John Cale)-who's anchored his bands for more than a decade-and bassist Taras Prodaniuk (Lucinda Williams, Elvis Costello) complementing and often pushing the leader through a full range of emotional explorations.

 

 

 

Side 1

Stony Ground

Salford Sunday

Sally B

Stuck on the Treadmill

Side 2

My Enemy

Good Things Happen to Bad People

Where’s Home?

Another Small Thing in Her Favour

Side 3

Straight and Narrow

The Snow Good

Saving the Good Stuff for You

Side 4

Will You Dance, Charlie Boy

I Found a Stray

The Rival

The Tic-Tac Man

Customer Reviews (1.00 Stars) 1 person(s) rated this product.

Terrible posted on 04/08/2013 1 Stars Reviewer: TJN You only need three words to describe the sound on this LP; compression, compression and more compression.

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