Ben Thompson

Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker should have been on cloud nine after the release of their exquisite 2016 album Overnight. It was the pair’s first for Rough Trade after self-releasing their previous albums and the reviews were nothing short of glowing. And yet things didn’t pan out quite how they’d hoped. Overnight sold only modestly and, wondering if they might not get a second chance with Rough Trade, Clarke and Walker were pitched into a period of soul-searching. Were all the sacrifices and disappointments and emotional turmoil really worth it in order to pursue their dream?

As Richard Thompson explains in his typically droll annotation, 1000 Years of Popular Music came about after Playboy asked various musicians to rank their top ten songs of the millennium. While most dipped no farther back than a few decades–a century at most–Thompson's musical memory rose to the challenge. The result is this concert set's encapsulation of 22 songs that trace a musical progression from the Middle Ages through Britney Spears, with Judith Owen and Debra Dobkin providing spare instrumental and rich vocal support…