The conventional wisdom is that Capitol got its Richard Thompson tribute album wrong, and Geen Linnet got theirs right. I'd say both opinions are exactly half correct.
On Beat the Retreat: Songs by Richard Thompson (Capitol, 1994), there are undoubtedly some mediocre contributions and one or two inexcusable ones: REM shouldn't have been allowed to get away with turning "Wall of Death"'s joyfully morbid jangle-pop into a sloppy acoustic country drone; David Byrne shouldn't have been allowed to record "Just the Motion" until he learned the chord changes; Graham Parker should have played less to type and picked a more interesting song than "Madness of Love." And while having Beausoleil do "Valerie" as a swampy cajun two-step was a stroke of brilliance, it does have to be said that Michael Doucet's singing makes Richard Thompson sound like Luther Vandross by comparison. And yet, and yet: Bob Mould gives "Turning of the Tide" the Husker Du treatment, and manages to capture and amplify both the song's cynicism and its compassion. The Blind Boys of Alabama reveal "Dimming of the Day" for what it is: a song of religious devotion, written in shockingly direct parallel to the hymn "Lead, Kindly Light". Loudon Wainright and Shawn Colvin add nothing new except a small chord suspension to "A Heart Needs a Home," but make it sound like it was written for them anyway. And best of all, June Tabor and Martin Simpson both bring precious gifts (her coffee-colored voice, his delicately perfect fingerpicked guitar) to the title track and then do something Thompson never did: they give it a beat -- and the result is a blossoming of one of Thompson's very good songs into perhaps the most affecting account of defeated romantic ambivalence ever committed to tape (just think about the symbolic complexity of the lines "I'm trailing my colours/Back home to you"). This rendition of that song alone is worth twice the price of the album.
The first mistake on The World Is a Wonderful Place: The Songs of Richard Thompson (Hokey Pokey/Green Linnet 1994) is its title, a tired snicker of cynicism that is too obvious by half. Its second mistake is the similar weariness of too many of its participants, who capture the gritty surfaces of Thompson's songs all too clearly and his warm humanity and sharp humor all too rarely. Some of them also went too far out of their way to dig up obscure material that wasn't worth the dig: the chamber-orchestra arrangement of "The Knife Edge" and Marvin Etzioni's half-hearted rendition of "It Don't Cost Much" both come to mind in this regard. And there's simply no excuse for Ron Kavana's talking-blues take on "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight." But Plainsong's a capella arrangement of "From Galway to Graceland" is stupendous, as is Gregson/Hewerdine/Reader's beautifully low-key performance of "Dimming of the Day," and Martin and Jessica Simpson shed new interpretive light on "Down Where the Drunkards Roll." If you're a Richard Thompson fan you're going to want both of these albums, but if you load them to your iPod you'll probably find that only about half of each program ends up on your playlist.
No comments:
Post a Comment