I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight

Today I added "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight" to my iTunes library. Richard Thompson has written any number of great songs, but this album is, in my not-so-humble opinion, his one true and unquestionable masterpiece. Each song is an unflinching look at the brutality of human experience in a world without hope or the possibility of redemption; the lyrics are matched with hauntingly appropriate tunes made all the more piercing by Linda Thompson's lovely voice.


Nihilism is no game, Quentin Tarantino's attempts to cutify it notwithstanding. Thompson does not invite us to envy the hopeless, but to empathetically enter into their despair. In this way, like the late Kurt Vonnegut, he is a humanist nihilist. This album from over thirty years ago (1974) has by itself made me pay careful attention to everything else Richard Thompson has released, which exercise has also brought great rewards.