Richard & Linda

Thirty-two years after the fact, this live album presents a full-length version of the shows performed by Richard & Linda Thompson to promote their 1975 album Pour Down Like Silver, their third LP, following Hokey Pokey released earlier in 1975, and 1974's I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight. They are accompanied by John Kirkpatrick on accordion and concertina, Dave Pegg on bass, and Dave Mattacks on drums. The recordings have not been released previously, except for "Calvary Cross" and "It'll Be Me," which were included on Richard Thompson's 1976 compilation Guitar, Vocal, but which have been remixed for this album.

Thirty-two years after the fact, this live album presents a full-length version of the shows performed by Richard & Linda Thompson to promote their 1975 album Pour Down Like Silver, their third LP, following Hokey Pokey released earlier in 1975, and 1974's I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight. They are accompanied by John Kirkpatrick on accordion and concertina, Dave Pegg on bass, and Dave Mattacks on drums. The recordings have not been released previously, except for "Calvary Cross" and "It'll Be Me," which were included on Richard Thompson's 1976 compilation Guitar, Vocal, but which have been remixed for this album.

Lock and load with a high-powered chronicle of one couple's failed marriage. Shoot Out The Lights is Richard and Linda Thompson’s final album together and, ironically, the folk-rock couple’s most artistically acclaimed and commercially successful. The album was recorded, scrapped, and rerecorded before finally emerging in 1982, arriving just around the time that the couple split up. Despite the separation, they embarked upon a U.S. tour to promote the album, delivering emotionally charged performances at every turn.

Thirty-two years after the fact, this live album presents a full-length version of the shows performed by Richard & Linda Thompson to promote their 1975 album Pour Down Like Silver, their third LP, following Hokey Pokey released earlier in 1975, and 1974's I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight. They are accompanied by John Kirkpatrick on accordion and concertina, Dave Pegg on bass, and Dave Mattacks on drums. The recordings have not been released previously, except for "Calvary Cross" and "It'll Be Me," which were included on Richard Thompson's 1976 compilation Guitar, Vocal, but which have been remixed for this album.

With the release of their classic 1974 debut, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, Richard and Linda Thompson set an unbelievably high standard for themselves. Although containing many of the same attributes, their follow-up, Hokey Pokey, doesn't quite reach the lofty heights of its predecessor, but then again not many records do. The Thompsons, from the opening Irish fiddle derivation of a Chuck Berry riff, through Linda's exquisite performance of "A Heart Needs a Home," to their cover of Mike Waterson's "Mole in a Hole" which closes the record, once again create a timeless amalgam of folk and rock. Recorded at the time of the Thompsons' conversion to Islam, Hokey Pokey comes across a bit lighter than Bright Lights.

In 1974, Richard Thompson and the former Linda Peters released their first album together, and I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight was nothing short of a masterpiece, the starkly beautiful refinement of the promise of Thompson's solo debut, Henry the Human Fly. In Linda Thompson, Richard found a superb collaborator and a world-class vocalist; Linda possessed a voice as clear and rich as Sandy Denny's, but with a strength that could easily support Richard's often weighty material, and she proved capable of tackling anything presented to her, from the delicately mournful "Has He Got a Friend for Me" to the gleeful cynicism of "The Little Beggar Girl." And while Richard had already made clear that he was a songwriter to be reckoned with, on I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight he went from strength to strength.

Richard & Linda Thompson - Sunnyvista (1979) {Chrysalis CCD 1247}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 260 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 108 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 29 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1979 Chrysalis Records | CCD 1247
Rock / Folk Rock / British Folk / British Folk Rock

1978's First Light marked Richard & Linda Thompson's first time in a recording studio after three years away from music, and it suggested they were still getting warmed up as performers; a year later, Sunnyvista found them in much stronger form and a significantly more upbeat frame of mind. Sunnyvista is the wittiest and most joyous album Richard & Linda made together; while several of Richard Thompson's trademark meditations on romance at it's least successful are on hand, "Why Do You Turn Your Back" manages to generate an unusually soulful groove, "Lonely Hearts" captures the melancholy country feel that First Light never quite caught, and "Traces of My Love" finds a winning warmth in its sadness.