All Richard Thompson, all the time

After Richard and Linda Thompson divorced (because Richard, the scumbag, cheated on her with, I believe, a backup singer), and then Linda Thompson lost her singing voice due to some bizarre psychosomatic thingy, Richard Thompson continued recording solo. In my opinion, these performances, while solid, lack the urgency and clarity of his work with his former wife. (I suppose that's not unlike what some people think of Paul Simon's post-Garfunkel work, but of course that's just baby-boomer "everything was better when I was young" whining, since Graceland, to give just one example, is stunningly brilliant. But I digress.)

That's why it's worth buying, and playing over and over again, the Richard Thompson tribute album, Beat the Retreat. There's not an off performance on the whole disc, largely due to his insightful and well-crafted song-writing. R.E.M.'s cover of "The Wall of Death" is compelling, and Shawn Colvin and Loudon Wainwright III's duet on "A Heart Needs a Home" is just lovely.

Which is not to say that Richard Thompson is not capable of delivering a song well all on his lonesome. His project 1000 Years of Popular Music is interesting for the amateur musicologist amongst us (and hey, who isn't looking for a recent recording of "Sumer Is Incumen In"?), but my favorite moment is his rendition of "Oops, I Did It Again." Believe it or not, he not only redeems this song, he demonstrated it has depths unknown by Miss Spears herself. It changed my life.

For real.