Richard Thompson remains something of a cult rocker rather than a bona fide rock star — but there are few similarly worthy candidates for the genre's personification on earth.
First of all, he's one of rock's undersung triple threats. "Richard's been one of my favorite guitar players for a very long time," said Jeff Tweedy, who produced and played on Thompson's 2015 album Still. "When I think about it, he's also one of my favorite songwriters and favorite singers."
Thompson's 2021 memoir, Beeswing, renders him something like rock's Forrest Gump: By the tender age of 19, he'd co-founded Fairport Convention, seen Hendrix shred and turned down a birthday invite from Paul McCartney.
He had also pretty much solidified his artistry as an emotion-forward, English-Scottish yawp who was equally virtuosic on acoustic and electric guitar. And Thompson's probing lyrics continue to twist the knife, again and again.
His guitar work has inspired scores of imitators, but nobody's played the instrument like Thompson. In retrieving the bagpipe's drone, his music didn't become old-timey or quaint; rather, it enabled him to tear the roof off.
Crank up his introductory calling card "Roll Over Vaughn Williams"; his roiling last album, 13 Rivers; and anything in between: Thompson's electric guitar will spin your head like a top. And on the acoustic, he's muscular, searching and incisive: both his Acoustic Classics discs will ravish you.
Happily, Thompson is still making some of the strongest music of his career. His new album, Ship to Shore, is a taut yet spacious new offering. After the sturm und drang of the modern-rocking 13 Rivers, mellower, rootsier tracks like "Freeze," "The Day That I Give In" and "Life's a Bloody Show" seem to loop back to the artist's essence.
With a whopping 19 studio albums since the early 1970s — six with his ex-wife Linda Thompson — to boil down Thompson's discography into essential tracks is a bit daunting. From here, seek out underrated '80s albums like Hand of Kindness; middle-of-the-road yet satisfying '90s works like Mock Tudor, and of course, his inspired work in the 2010s and 2020s.
But for now, if you're a Thompson newbie, read on for 10 songs you must hear by the three-time GRAMMY nominee.
"Roll Over Vaughn Williams" (Henry the Human Fly, 1972)
"If [Henry the Human Fly] was a statement of intent, then the opening track was the distillation of the statement," Thompson wrote in Beeswing.
Indeed, while "Roll Over Vaughn Williams" isn't the strongest song he ever wrote, it's a perfect opening salvo: a 22-year-old Thompson, emancipated from English folk-rockers Fairport Convention, sounds his strange, beautiful clarion call.
"Live in fear," Thompson commands between bramble-like guitar runs — a thesis he'd fully air out on I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, his first classic album.
"The Calvary Cross" (I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, 1974)
I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is typically bandied about as Thompson's masterpiece, with or without Linda. Arguably, that honorific might go to Shoot Out the Lights; when Thompson's age caught up to his precocious, world-weary persona, the results were pure magic.
That's nitpicking, though. Front to back, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is phenomenal, and a crucial entryway to Thompson's musicality and worldview.
Every song is terrific, but the doomy, circuitous "The Calvary Cross" is the first to smack you in the face. (It also invents Jason Molina, right down to the fragile whine in the Magnolia Electric Co. frontman's tenor.)
"The End of the Rainbow" (I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, 1974)
Probably the darkest non-metal song ever written by a 23-year-old, "The End of the Rainbow" begins with Thompson addressing "you little horror/ Safe at your mother's breast."
The unknowing infant has no idea what they're in for: your father is a bully, your sister is a whore, tycoons and barrow boys will take everything you've got. "Every loving handshake is just another man to beat," Thompson sings, steely-eyed — knowing too much, too early.
"Night Comes In" (Pour Down Like Silver, 1975)
The year I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight dropped, the Thompsons converted to Sufism. Their faith would inform a couple of inessential albums, like 1978's First Light and 1979's Sunnyvista — but first, they'd release a work of gobsmacking potency and spirituality.
Pour Down Like Silver is the only Thompsons album that truly goes toe-to-toe with Shoot Out the Lights. Its first masterpiece, "Night Comes In," is a long walk home — a majestic meditation on Thompson's Sufi initiation.
"Lose my mind in dance forever," he sings, as the languid verse flows into the vertiginous chorus. "Turn my world around."
"Dimming of the Day" (Pour Down Like Silver, 1975)
Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, David Gilmour, and others covered this astonishing ballad for very good reasons.
"Dimming of the Day" is a love song genuinely worthy of the Old Testament, sung with quiet power by Linda, accompanied only by her husband's acoustic guitar, backing vocal, banjo, and other light overdubs.
Has there ever been a lyric of romantic devotion like "You pull me like the moon pulls on the tide"? Or "I'm living for the night we steal away"?
The track concludes Pour Down Like Silver with a perfect denouement in a solo guitar performance of James Scott Skinner's "Dargai." Six years later, the Thompsons would smack down their romantic dream for good.
"Shoot Out the Lights" (Shoot Out the Lights, 1982)
"I know people call Shoot Out the Lights a break-up album, but I can honestly say that was never the intention," Thompson later told Uncut. "[The songs] were all written a year before we split up, so people can think what they like."
Luckily, this pesky fact doesn't undermine the unique power of Shoot Out the Lights — a perfect, eight-song monument to disillusionment featuring Richard's sharpest writing and Linda's most empathetic singing.
The title track, one of Thompson's ultimate guitar showcases, is an unquestionable highlight. The lyrics, about some sort of crepuscular gunman sneaking through the night, are beside the point; his neck-snapping soloing tells the entire story.
"Wall of Death" (Shoot Out the Lights, 1982)
Much like Thompson, rock heroes R.E.M. knew how to conjure pop catharsis from the shadows; it's no surprise they recorded a killer version of "Wall of Death."
Shoot Out the Lights' astonishing closer tosses Richard and Linda into a highly metaphorical fun fair. There's Noah's Ark! The mouse! The crooked house! But the doomed couple opt to whirl in a loop, caught in centrifugal force, wherever it may lead.
The best part of "Wall of Death" is when Thompson launches into his solo, cracking like a bullwhip, as the ride cymbal doubles up, barrelling the album — and this musical couple — toward its end. The Tunnel of Love ends here.
"1952 Vincent Black Lightning" (Rumor and Sigh, 1991)
For all of the absolute bangers and weepers above, Thompson's most revered song by some margin actually came along during the '90s.
After his requisite '80s wilderness period, Thompson slugged out the deliciously new wavey Rumor and Sigh, which gave him a hit with the jangly sardonic "I Feel So Good." The other lynchpin track was "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," a popular knockout despite never being a single.
The fictional story of James' bequeathment of the titular motorbike to Red Molly re-cemented Thompson as a consummate storyteller, his avuncular voice and percolating guitar driving it all home.
"The Ghost of You Walks" (You? Me? Us?, 1996)
As with many Thompson deep cuts, he bettered "The Ghost of You Walks" on the must-have Acoustic Classics Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. But this version on You? Me? Us? will do similar heartwork on you, from its butterflies-inducing arpeggios to Thompson's tender chorus.
"Blue murder on the dance floor / French kisses in the rain," Thompson sings, at a relationship's dimming of the day. "Blood wedding in the water 'til I see you again / Dutch courage is the game." Plainly, "The Ghost of You Walks" is one of the most beautiful songs Thompson ever wrote.
"She Never Could Resist a Winding Road" (Still, 2015)
Jeff Tweedy has found himself on the shortlist to give lifers a jolt in the studio; he's helmed albums by Bill Fay, Mavis Staples, Low, and more. Still arguably holds up the best, possibly because Thompson's personality permeates it completely.
Still has a lighter touch than most of the albums that surround it, which means Thompson's sticky melodic instincts take the forefront.
The opener, "She Never Could Resist a Winding Road," makes an ancient-sounding melody gloriously unspool, culminating in an exhilarating solo by Thompson.
Still's title says it all: Thompson isn't simply an old master still doing the thing. As on the wondrous Ship to Shore, he's revered equally for what he's creating right now.