Richard Thompson, Still, album review: Nigh-on faultless work from an acknowledged master

In many songs, Thompson walks a fine line of blurred moralities and moods

‘I try not to look backwards ... it is all about the next project, the next song, the next show, the next album’

Wilco frontman and, increasingly, producer-for-hire Jeff Tweedy has spoken of “working exclusively with artists who make me look good as a producer”; but as Richard Thompson confirms here, his skills are subtler than that suggests. On “Broken Doll”, for instance, it may be Thompson’s deft finger-volume controls that take the edge off the attack of his guitar fills, but the guitar and organ tones that haunt the song are surely Tweedy’s design touches.

Not that Thompson lacks for touches of his own on this typically excellent set of performances, peeling off one brilliant, skirling solo after another from the springy “All Buttoned Up” to the dizzying “No Peace No End” and beyond. Each has its unique purpose: on the opening “She Never Could Resist a Winding Road”, the halfway break seems constrained, regretful for a lost love, while the more ornamented closing break seems to celebrate her freedom of spirit.

Richard Thompson (photo credit Vincent Dixon) (Vincent Dixon)

The subtle shifts of Thompson’s playing are demonstrated on “Guitar Heroes”, a tour de force homage to his influences that closes with one of Thommo’s own dervish improvisations. Elsewhere, “Pony in the Stable” is like a musical puzzle, built around a serpentine melody in traditional UK folk style. When the mandolin joins his electric guitar, the result sounds like a courtly folk equivalent of Beefheart’s Magic Band.

His songwriting, too, is as good here as it’s ever been, whether dealing with the polarised subjects of the bohemian celebration “Beatnik Walking” or the more sinister characters castigated in “Long John Silver” and “Dungeons for Eyes”. In many songs, Thompson walks a fine line of blurred moralities and moods. The mordant, anxious tone of “Patty Don’t You Put Me Down”, for instance, is at once pleading, chiding and lustful, while the trenchant “Where’s Your Heart?” is sad and scolding simultaneously. A brilliant, nigh-on faultless work from an acknowledged master.