What does it sound like?:
Well it sounds massive. Produced by RT (no Americana muso involvement as for the recent Jeff Tweedy and Buddy Miller collaborations), the sound is big beefy and rocky. Opening track “The storm won’t come” has piledriving power chords and a stonking guitar solo while Richard sings of his wish for an Amageddon like cleansing of the world – “Blow these sad buildings down, fire burn what fire may, rain to wash it all away”. So far, so Old Testament. The album is very much a band effort and track 2 starts with a syncopated drum heavy blast of riffing before “The Rattle Within” despairs at man’s inability to deal with his inner demons. More religious imagery here… Track 4 also mentions Armageddon, but this time with reference to the narrator’s all consuming possessiveness and defensiveness of his beloved – you can infer this is not the healthiest of relationships. He’s a fallen soul – early on we learn “as a kid I saw rainbows, but life turns you upside down, shakes the money out of your Wranglers, leaves you heaving on the ground”. In between wracked verses RT’s Stratocaster spits out a series of howling and wailing notes just like a proper guitar hero. “Trying” lightens the mood slightly in that there’s a chorus more along the lines of “Turning of the tide” with Judith Owen adding sweetening harmonies, but don’t get out the party hats – RT tells us “I thought I could fake forever, but I was wrong”. We’ve all been there. The songs are bleak, pounding, rocking like flip and get better with every listen. The album lightens in mood and tone as it goes on – “You can’t reach me “ is much popper than the earlier tracks, for example, though the religious themes continue – “you can’t reach me, my education comes from above” we learn, and there’s another nippy, unplayable (to mere mortals), guitar solo. The final track gives the glimmer of optimism where RT tells us “If life is for living I’m your man…I’m shaking the gates of Heaven”. A Tig-like re-sequencing might make the doomy early section easier on the ears, but I don’t think that’s what producer Thompson intended at all. He has said he does write grim stuff but there’s always a ray of hope at the end – this is that methodology at album level. You have the earn those sweet harmonies. What sounds dense and impenetrable on first listen reveals itself to be rich and complex but by no means unpalatable after a few plays.
What does it all *mean*?
These songs hint at RT seeing something terrible coming, and wanting it to arrive so we can get it over with and deal with the struggle for redemption. He’s like a crazy man shouting in the street, or Howard Beale in the latter part of “Network” screaming incoherently about some impending disaster he’s unable to articulate. It means RT is still on fire as a songwriter, and this album sounds like he means it. “Oh let me be uplifted, oh take this weight from me, and heal me from my demons, and forever I’ll be free” he sings. Perhaps it accords with my generally pessimistic mood at the moment – it’s all going downhill isn’t it? I’m with RT here.
Goes well with…
There’s a lot here so to get to the good stuff it deserves a proper listen initially, ruminative glass of the good stuff in hand and headphones on. But now I know it it goes with anything.
Release Date:
Might suit people who like…
Mrs.T and I have a theory that there is Easy RT and Hard RT – easy being “Vincent Black Lightning”, “Beeswing”, “Persuasion”, “A heart needs a home” – which any but the fatally cloth eared will enjoy. Then there’s the hard, heavy, uncompromising stuff, bleak, tormented and rocking, which is mostly what you get here. Happily I can take either flavour, but lovers of the sweeter end of the menu might pass. There is no evidence of his peerless acoustic guitar playing at all though I do think I detect a touch of the rarely heard Thompson mandolin on “O Cinderella”. It’s an electric guitar masterclass, mind you.
Vulpes Vulpes says
Well that’s another fine cost you’ve caused me to incur, Twang old son. Blimey, I was reaching for the order button before your second para. Love a bit of RT on fire, eschewing the eschaton and giving it to us right between the eyes.
Moose the Mooche says
He eschews the eschaton better than anyone since Escher.
Twang says
Pleasure Vulpes. 🙂
SteveT says
You obviously have an early copy of this – mine on order but not released for another 2 weeks.
Look forward to it though as reviewers have compared it to Mock Tudor which is one of my favourites of his more recent stuff.
The missus won’t be happy though – she can’t stand him.
fentonsteve says
That makes two of us.
Funnily enough, though, I prefer him in solo acoustic mode live.
Gatz says
Much as I love my acoustic Thommo his greatest appeal to me is the howling, almost atonal electric work outs. I’m looking forward to this, and the Southend gig, enormously!
Twang says
I’ll be there Gatz. Pint?
Gatz says
I don’t usually drink at gigs but maybe a soda and lime! I’ll be there with my other half and meeting a few other friends who’ll be sitting in another part of the hall, so I might have a full dance card but I’ll PM you my number.
Moose the Mooche says
I thought it was established etiquette at gigs these days to drink as much beer as possible and spend most of the night talking loudly or going for a slash?
Gatz says
I hope that my sitting in my seat and enjoying the show doesn’t put them off their drinking, conversation and constant triangular journey between the bar, the toilets and places they’ve actually paid for.
That said Simon Tassano, Thomo’s sound guy, has a regrettable tendency to turn everything up to 11. The last time I saw the electric trio, from the balcony at the Royal Festival Hall, I wouldn’t have noticed if a 747 had been taking off right behind me. It was the loudest show I have seen since my heavy metal teens. I like to think that some people who hadn’t been keeping up thought that going to see an ex-Fairporter in his late 60s would guarantee an evening of mellow acoustic folkiness. Those same people are probably still wandering around the South Bank now, with stunned expressions and whistling ears.
Moose the Mooche says
They went for Richard Digance: they got Sun 0)))
Tom Coffin says
A friend of mine saw him a couple of weeks ago and said the only band he’d heard louder was My Bloody Valentine! Greater volume doesn’t necessarily equate to greater passion and commitment – it just means your ears are getting bludgeoned.
fentonsteve says
I think that’s my problem with him in live electric form, too. And I’ve seen MBV.
Twang says
He was fine when i saw him at Cambridge last year. Sound was excellent. It was the aging bladders and the git behind me singing along that bugged me.
hubert rawlinson says
The sound in Cheshire this year was much better, didn’t feel I was bludgeoned by the bass.
As I’ve said I’m not a fan of the trio I need other instruments in the mix, but I’m intrigued by your review and shall give it a listen.
retropath2 says
If it is anything like the new material paraded at Towersey it will be a corker. I have lost a degree of faith since, funnily enough, Mock Tudor or earlier even, Mirror Blue, finding only a couple of good tracks per record. After Electric, which I found hugely disappointing, I didn’t even bother with Still, which, after a live show last summer I belatedly discovered to be actually rather good. This current rhythm section are integral to this noisier squalling: I don’t think his usual suspects prior to this trio could or would put up with it.
Demoted to Town Hall from Symphony Hall, due to Sarah Millican booking the latter over 2 years ago, it should be worth going on 26/10. I am.
@steveT: does your missus like Sarah Millican? Strangely I suddenly have a spare ticket next to Mrs Path, which took some explaining…. (“But you’ve only just seen him?!”)
Twang says
I agree on Electric – not so memorable. But “Still” regularly gets a spin on my CD player.
Colin H says
So, in short… Electric turned off, Still played…
He was in Belfast recently. Didn’t fancy it.
Lando Cakes says
You know that he no longer has Danny on bass, yes?
Beezer says
Great review. I’ll be getting a copy.
I prefer the Stratocastering to the acousticering. Mind, I’d sell a kidney to fingerpick like he does.
Meaning a kidney from my body. Not one available from the meat counter at Morrisons.
Right. I think I’ve made myself perfectly clear.
Vulpes Vulpes says
Offaly clear, old chum.
Beezer says
Oh dear. That took guts.
Max the Dog says
Great review, Twang. Isn’t it wonderful that we can be so enthusiastic about music? I’ll get it – my first RT since ‘Sweet Warrior’.
Twang says
Thanks Max. Yes, go for it!
Kjwilly says
I’ve been able to listen to this, thanks to the NPR First Listen site. I think it is his best album for a long time. I can’t help wondering what is going on in his head though – he sounds like he is mighty upset about something or other
Moose the Mooche says
Hasn’t he always?
retropath2 says
Well, he has moved to New York. Has Nancy?
Gatz says
Reviews I have seen mention a year of personal upheaval, so I guess that was in the press release and uunderstandably this has fueled speculation. Rumour has it that he has moved to New Jersey with a new partner.
Twang says
Sounds about right. He clearly has some sort of devil he’s working out.
Lando Cakes says
I rather get the impression of a man done wrong.
Lando Cakes says
An impression which was entirely wrong, apparently…
Kjwilly says
What made you change your mind?
Lando Cakes says
Current discussion on the RT mailing list. Some unhappiness re the fact that he credits new partner on the record sleeve.
retropath2 says
York, Jersey, all the same east coast jumper…….
Gatz says
For those of us without advance access the 13 Rivers is released in the UK today.
Gatz says
I often have an odd relationship with Richard Thompson albums. I revere him more than any other performer, and honestly don’t think he has any serious rival to the title of Greatest Of All Time, but sometimes there’s a flush of enthusiasm which wanes and may not come back (that could be Sweet Warrior as an example), other times I might not get an album for a long, long time (it was more than a decade before I realised how good You, Me, Us really is).
I’m three listens in to 13 Rivers so far, but my early conclusion is that this is fucking magnificent. It is a very good Richard Thompson album, and of course that makes it about as good as and album can be.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
It’s like dark and heavy, he said after one listen
Moose the Mooche says
Oh, swipe me, it’s Paul Morley!
Lando Cakes says
I’ve now had three listens myself. I’m liking this a great deal. I don’t think his guitar has been quite that snarly since pre-Mock Tudor times.
SteveT says
Quite pissed off that mine not here until tomorrow
Lando Cakes says
I think you’ll find it worth the wait…
SteveT says
And there was me thinking it was standard Richard Thompson fare until I got to The bones of Gilead and The dog in you. The guitar solo on the latter of those two songs is sublime. He has a number of fantastic solos on record but that is right up there with his best. Where would I rate this in his output? Right up there with Daring Adventures and Mock Tudor.
retropath2 says
Back from Town hall, Brum, having thoroughly enjoyed the tour show. I won’t post a(nother) review, given it was really the same set as at Towersey, expanded from 1 into 2 hours. Probably the best RT I have ever seen, the combination of material, the bandleader being in excellent spirits and the involvement of the band, the de facto dominant force proving, if I was uncertain before, to be the mighty Michael Jerome. (I would go as far as to say he is the best drummer on the circuit these days.) I don’t know why there were apologies around playing some new, the new set is so strong and the audience so partisan as to know it all anyway: it was the least Fairporty Thompson gig I have attended, audience wise, being more scholarly looking and ascetic ageing hipsters than portly tie-dyed folk-rockers. Probably also the first time ever I have seen him not play his “hit” (and to make his “joke” about it being his hit, and I must have seen him dozens of times fro 1976 to the present. Highlights were the opening thunder of ‘Bones of Gilead’ and the 2 extended guitar pieces, ‘You Can’t Win’ and a searing ‘Put It There, Pal’, on record his best solo, IMHO, here just ridiculously good. Of course we got, as his nod to the ‘other’ RT, the beginning to be tired ‘Vincent Black Lightning’ and ‘Beeswing’, topped with a stunning ‘Withered and Died’, a variation from the supposed setlist of ‘Down Where the Drunkards Roll’, as Taras Prodaniak kindly gave me his setlist at the end.
On a mean personal note about the performer, I am not sure a tucked in T-shirt does his now somewhat impressive tummy any favours, it being a shock when we see our heroes have middle aged spread like the rest of us. (Hell, even Keef has a gut these days…..)