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 | Title : Old Kit Bag (Limited Edition w/ Bonus CD)
Author : Thompson, Richard
Release Date : 20030506
Binding : Audio CD
Regular Price : $16.98
Amazon.com Price : $13.49
(21
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Editorial Reviews :
After a string of slick albums that de-emphasized his folk-rock past, The Old Kit Bag marks a return to Thompson's indie-label roots. Produced by John Chelew (John Hiatt, Blind Boys of Alabama), it was recorded quickly with a minimum of overdubs and just a handful of musicians (double-bassist Danny Thompson, drummer Michael Jerome, and background vocalist Judith Owen). Fortunately, this spare approach serves Thompson well because he's such a strong and varied songwriter plus a remarkably distinctive guitarist. Longtime fans will likely gravitate to the musical equivalents of comfort food--the weepy ballad 'Happy Days and Auld Lang Syne,' the revved-up rocker 'I'll Tag Along,' and the brooding melancholy of 'First Breath.' Yet subsequent listens reveal the subtler charms of a gorgeous jazz-pop ballad, 'I've Got No Right to Have It All,' and the righteous anger of 'Outside of the Inside,' on which Thompson, a devout Muslim, attacks the moral emptiness of religious fanaticism. Thirty-five years after his debut with Fairport Convention, Thompson proves that he's yet to exhaust his store of ideas or his will to challenge himself and others. --Keith Moerer
Buyer Reviews :
A prefatory disclaimer: I'm wholly in the tank for Richard Thompson. Have been for 20 years. I have everything he's done but the fan club stuff and the most obscure sides as a supporting player (and wouldn't rate anything at less than 3 stars). I have heard most of these songs over the past 9 months in three live performances and am in the position - not unusual, but unusual for me - of knowing, and loving, a body of music before I'd heard the artist's recordings of his own work. I am not an impartial witness.
And I love this album. In its variety, spareness, emotional intensity, and simple beauty, it rivals any single album Thompson has done since the fabled Shoot Out the Lights. I have seen some reviews that describe The RT Band of this recording as a 'power trio' a la Cream or Mountain (sic) (I know - a quartet). If one had only heard the second track, the scalding 'Jealous Words,' one might credibly carry this point. But Thompson here displays all his influences - Celtic, Scottish, Middle Eastern, American (jazz, blues, rock, pop) Caribbean - in brilliantly realized, lapidary tracks. And The Old Kit Bag also has Thompson's obligatory shot - two very good ones, actually -at a commercial single (the haunting 'Gethsemene' and the rousing 'She Said It Was Destiny').
Fans expecting guitar pyrotechnics - Thompson's signature wheeling, careering, soaring, jagged figures and explorations - are unlikely to be disappointed, but little here would qualify as fiery and, throughout, Thompson exhibits an extraordinary, albeit dense and imaginative, restraint. This I must attribute to the spare format and the tasteful production of John Chelew (Los Lobos, Blind Boys of Alabama), who put Thompson's boundless good musical taste on excellent display with the minimum take sessions. This recording also marks Thompson's first outing on an Indie label, Cooking Vinyl/spinArt, and he is well served by the connection (the packaging is attractive and useful),
A few other tracks require special citation: the chilling 'Outside of the Inside' might be heard either as lambasting of Islamic extremism or, oddly, as an attempt to render the Taliban perspective sympathetically - Thompson is a convert to Sufi Islam. In light of his own comments on the extremists, however, the former perspective is the accurate one. In the disarming 'One Door Opens,' Thompson bounces along (in duetto with Judith Owen, another of his madrigal-clear accompanying voices) in a lively theme, but the lyrics are typically, acerbically Thompsonesque - it's tripping, exceedingly tuneful performance that will stay in your head. Long time collaborator, acoustic-bassist Danny Thompson (no relation) gives a lovely account of his art (the production here is particularly good - you can hear the resonant wood, and on several tracks - particularly 'A Love You Can't Survive' - DT plays arco most movingly).
The US release of The Old Kit Bag also has a 'bonus CD' that includes two tracks from Thompson's '1000 Years of Popular Song' roadshow, which he has recently committed to CD (at a nearly prohibitive price) and a Quicktime short clip from a BBC documentary, 'A Solitary Life.' This is marketing, true, but one of these sides, 'So Ben Mi Ca Bon Tempo,' from late Medieval-early Renaissance Italy, features bravura Thompson lute work (on guitar); the other song is Prince's 'Kiss' (a hoot). (He also performs Brittney's 'Whoops' on the full CD).
This is mature, densely concentrated, tannic, and long-finishing Richard Thompson. Devotees will be thrilled. Newcomers will be stunned. 'Imagine encountering,' wrote Kurt Loder in Rolling Stone 20 years ago in a review that sent me straight to the record shop, 'here in the Eighties, someone who had never heard of Jimi Hendrix, who had never been moved by the great singers and session groups of golden-age Motown, or who, by whatever unimaginable means, had managed to remain incognizant of the collected musical masterworks of Lennon and McCartney. back
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