Album review: Richard Thompson, Electric (Proper)

There are good songs and not so good songs on Electric. There is bitterness, bleakness, wit, disorientation and asperity, melody, muscularity and atmosphere, all damped with the nap of Thompson's felted baritone.

But, as the title suggests, it's partly the guitar-playing we're here for. And there's lots, pealing throughout the album like bells in a gloomy old deconsecrated church. Redemption by plucked string. Buddy Miller produces analogically.