Through A Glass Darkly

Richard Thompson doesn't exactly have "greatest hits" but one of his most popular and enduring songs, 1932 Vincent Black Lightening, appears on this album from ( I think ) the early nineties Rumour and Sigh. A Leader of the Pack style live fast and die young saga, 1932 Vincent is given a simple folky setting with fine guitar picking from Thompson and the narrative tale obviously struck a strong chord with his audience. Taken as a whole though, Rumour and Sigh is quite a dark album, especially lyrically. Relationship songs invariably centre on failure ( Read About Love, I Misunderstood, Keep Your Distance, Backlash Love Affair, Why Must I Plead, You Dream Too Much ), Mystery Wind speaks of unseen malevolant forces and I have always taken Mother Knows Best, with its' violent guitar work, to be an anti-Thatcher rant. The outwardly cheery musical setting of Feel So Good in fact contains lyrics about wanting to take someone apart and Grey Walls is almost unbearably sad in its depiction of the treatment of mental illness. Having said all that, these songs are set in fine melodies with excellent guitar playing and the assistance of a fine band containing notable contributions again from Aly Bain and John Kirkpatrick on violin and accordion / concertina. Keep Your Distance contains deliciously painful memories for me since it perfectly sums up a situation I found ( find ) myself in. I will just say that the album contains 14 tracks and I could happily do without the final two, the irredeemably maudlin God Loves a Drunk and Psycho Street where the disturbing nature of the lyrics finally oversteps the mark for me. Fortunately, since these are the last tracks on the disk they can easily be bypassed.