Richard & Linda Thompson

Richard Thompson should need no introduction. But, I guess, since most didn't grow up with fathers subconsciously inculcating them with his music, I suppose I should give some background. Richard Thompson was a guitarist and songwriter in the seminal British Folk-rock outfit Fairport Convention, before leaving for a solo career and later marrying one Linda Pettifer.

His first solo album, the curiously titled Henry the Human Fly did not set the world on fire, but he soon resurfaced as a duo with his wife, and in 1974 released an album, I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, that is pretty brilliant. Thompson's ye olde baritone voice and acoustic guitar chops merge with the multitracked vocals of his wife to add a woozy technicolour to otherwise sepia-toned songs that sound like they've been sung in front bars across the Isle for a long, long time. In a good way.

It has a real sense of yearning and a balance between destitution and optimism. By their next album they both converted to a Islam, joined a Sufi commune and divorced some years later. Richard's last solo album Sweet Warrior dealt with the Iraq conflict and was very solid indeed.

Richard & Linda Thompson - I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight

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