With all due respect to one of the greatest talents of our time, for awhile there it was starting to seem like Richard Thompson was getting a bit too enamored with Britney Spears' covers and ancient obscurities from centuries long gone.
The venerable British guitarist is back, however, back from anthology land, back from doing film scores, back from his offbeat but unforgettable cover of Spears' Oops! I Did It Again, and back from the obsessions of his musical retrospective of the last millennium (1000 Years of Popular Music).
It finds Thompson in typically sharp form, playing the blazes out of his guitar, and living up to every bit of his reputation as one of the finest stringmen in the business. He takes traditional guitar solos and bends them and twists them in totally unexpected directions as he does in the '50's-flavored rocker Bad Monkey, or the intricate Needle and Thread.
The songwriter also shows off an array of styles on the 14-song outing, whether playing the part of the straight rock 'n' roller in Mr.
Stupid, switching to ska rhythms for the mediocre Francesca, or taking a turn as a somber and mournful balladeer on She Sang Angels to Rest.
What may be most surprising is that Thompson gets blatantly political here, particularly on the growling Dad's Gonna Kill Me. The "Dad" in this case is an abbreviation for Baghdad and the first verse, sung from a soldier's viewpoint, sets up the very disturbing tale with clarity:
"Out in the desert there's a soldier lying dead/vultures pecking the eyes out of his head/another day that could have been me there instead/Nobody loves me here/Nobody loves me here/Dad's gonna kill me.
"
Most of the songs on the set aren't as dark in tone as that, and Thompson's sense of humor surfaces several times, notably on the tale of a miserable cheating husband and his equally miserable cheating wife, the Celtic-tinged Johnny's Far Away.
All in all, Sweet Warrior has a few too many lackluster cuts to rank among Thompson's finest works, but it's still worth celebrating, if only for the four or five cuts here that fit right alongside the best in his overflowing repertoire.
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