Richard Thompson - Rumor and Sigh
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CD Details
Artist: Richard ThompsonEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1991-05-21
Music Label: Capitol
Soundtracks:
- Read About Love
- I Feel So Good
- I Misunderstood
- Grey Walls
- You Dream Too Much
- Why Must I Plead
- 1952 Vincent Black Lightning
- Backlash Love Affair
- Mystery Wind
- Don't Sit on My Jimmy Shands
- Keep Your Distance
- Mother Knows Best
- God Loves a Drunk
- Psycho Street
Music reviews of Rumor and Sigh
Music Review: One of the best - from one of the best
Rating: 5 Stars
Richard Thompson really is astonishing. From early collaborations with Nick Drake, definitive British folk with Fairport Convention, gorgeous folk duets with ex-wife Linda, scalding guitar solos with Loudon Wainwright, guitar mentor to the Golden Palominos, to the real meat and bones: his solo stuff. Who else has been churning out albums for 40 years, and seems like he might still be yet to peak?
'Rumour and Sigh' is of course his breakthrough success from 1991, and certainly one of his handful of best albums (and that's a handful from a pretty big bunch). What matters here is the sheer strength of his songwriting. Never mind that he's also a great vocalist and jaw-dropping guitarist.
The classic song most usually cited is 'Vincent Black Lightning 1952', and with good reason. It's a phenomanally good folk song which manages to be heartbreaking, angry and evocative all at once, while Thompson's acoustic guitar pyrotechnics go almost un-noticied because the song is just so damn strong.
Of course it doesn't stop there. There is the heartbreak of 'Behind
Grey Walls', where he sends his 'darling' to an old age home, and she walks away without even recognising him. The doctors say 'she'll never be right again' - or the beautifully nasty 'Read About Love' (horribly similar to my own experience), where he the singer is punished for asking about sex, until he recieves a book at age 14 'It's cover was plain / Written by a doctor with a German name). Having read it seven times he demands to know why his girlfriend doesn't 'moan and sigh'.
I'm missing other brilliant songs. Jumping over them, truth be told, to mention the closing 'Psycho Street' - a fascinating, invogorating, terrible song in which middle class England (including the bloke who pushed his lawnmower 2000 miles on his knees, in a parody of Thompson's own Sufi Islam) are lampooned, ending with the prescient and sinister story of a jealous woman who mails her rival a 'beauty treatment' which contains acid and disfiguring chemicals. She winks at her husband, 12 years before you-know-what and says 'pre-emptive strike'. It's hard to know what to say.
Musically the production is sometimes perhaps just a little smooth, but that's the only fault I could find with this album, and it's a minor one. There are plenty of times when it's edgy and in your face, too.
Stylistically this runs the gamut from acoustic folk to cranked up rock to experimental weirdness. The only consistent thing is Thompson's songwriting, demanding voice, and effortlessly brilliant guitar.
At the moment they're offering it with 'Mock Todor' - probably his other best album of the 90's. A good idea.
Description of Rumor and Sigh
His odyssey through British and American folk and rock has taken Richard Thompson from Fairport Convention's initial stabs at becoming England's Jefferson Airplane to deserved status as an inimitable guitarist and songwriter; "possessor of the magic touch," as the Fairport anthem "Come All Ye" aptly dubbed him. Also playing Stratocaster, acoustic guitar, or mandolin, he has written an astonishing body of songs that can time-travel from moor and meadow to factory town and cyberspace and keep both tragedy and farce in focus. This superb 1991 solo album is no exception. Spurred by his darting electric jigs and reels, up-to-the-minute and old as the hills, the set juggles traditional forms and modern production to comment on sex education ("Read About Love"), homicide ("I Feel So Good") and, as always, love gone wrong ("I Misunderstood") or tragically interrupted ("1952 Vincent Black Lightning," at once a gentle parody of Beach Boys car songs and a rigorously constructed acoustic ballad). --Sam SutherlandCountry CDs
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