Richard & Linda Thompson: Shoot Out The Lights
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Review by Mark Werlin - November 22, 2015
Shoot Out the Lights is an acknowledged classic rock album, and a painful essay on the end of love and the depths of betrayal.
As a longtime fan of Richard Thompson, owner of four different issues of this recording, and fortunate member of the audience at a club performance in 1982, I am as far as possible from an unbiased judge of the record. With that caveat: if you can find a copy of this SACD for less than a king's ransom, add it to your collection. It's the best digital representation of the original analogue recording.
Those who are not familiar with the musical accomplishments of Richard Thompson would do well to begin with this disc. Rarely has a songwriter laid bare his domestic failures—the breakup of a marriage and the loss of an artistic partnership—so poignantly. Not long after recording this album, ex-wife Linda Thompson lost the ability to sing for nearly 20 years, making this document an especially significant milestone in her performing career.
Shoot Out the Lights opens with the blistering rocker "Don't Renege on our Love". The taunting lyrics ("do I take you for a lover, or just a deceiver?") tear the skin off romantic illusions of lifelong love. The Thompsons are backed by most of the 1970 Full House personnel from Richard's first band, Fairport Convention: Simon Nicol on rhythm guitar and backing vocals, Dave Pegg on bass and Dave Mattacks, drums. The Fairporters only accompanied Richard on this record and the follow-up, "Hand of Kindness". Their presence, both in the studio and on the road, empowered RT to exercise his growing confidence as a guitarist, singer and performer.
I confess that I cannot listen to the final choruses of Linda's performance of "Walking on a Wire" without tears. The emotional bruises are still so raw that it's difficult to imagine how she could have recorded, much less performed the song live. If you think I'm exaggerating, watch the YouTube video of "Walking on a Wire" from the 1982 tour.
Richard takes the lead on the irony-tinged "Man in Need". A brief respite from the turmoil, the gentle "Just the Motion", precedes the real fireworks of the record, the title track.
Opening with a riff in hommage to Link Wray's seminal guitar instrumental "Rumble", "Shoot Out the Lights" lays out what will become RT's thematic territory for years to come: the pain of the divided heart. "In the dark, who can see his face? In the dark, who can reach him?" As a lyricist, Richard doesn't so much pose the question as demand to know the answer. His reverb-drenched Stratocaster solo, with its eschewal of familiar pentatonic scales, jumps wide intervals like a panicked man fleeing his demons.
Linda returns for a final and emotionally devestating vocal turn on the dramatic narrative "Did She Jump or Was she Pushed?" I have heard Richard sing the song himself in recent concerts, but underneath his baritone I always hear, like a ghostly echo, Linda's voice: "She was there one minute, and then she was gone the next..."
The anthemic "Wall of Death" (a reference to the amusement park ride in Great Britain) has been part of RT's performing repertoire since its introduction on this record. "This is the nearest to being alive" sums up the metaphor: if life is the plaything of fate, then "let me take my chances on the Wall of Death."
The sonic character of the SACD closely resembles the Ryko Au20 release. Both discs were remastered by Toby Clearmountain from the original analogue tapes. The SACD's extra resolution particularly benefits Linda's expressive vocals, and adds a touch more snap to Dave Mattacks' snare hits and Richard's stinging guitar lines.
In the more than 30 years since "Shoot out the Lights" Richard Thompson has continued to write excellent new material and perform as a solo artist and in various band configurations. Shoot Out the Lights was one of many career artistic high points, but the presence of Linda Thompson, whose performances so painfully embody the naked anger and bitterness of abandonment, raises it to a status occupied by few other rock music recordings of the time.
Copyright © 2015 Mark Werlin and HRAudio.net
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