Linda Thompson: Versatile Heart CD Review
Enduring British Folk Star's First Album for Five Years
Jan 12, 2009
Linda fell on harder artistic times after she split with husband, Richard.
She famously lost her voice for two years after the Thompsons' marriage fell apart in 1982 and then quit music altogether, opting to run an antique shop in London. Years in the artistic wilderness followed and a comeback was further postponed when her mother died in 1999. As a result, it would be 2001 and the album Give Me a Sad Song before Linda would re-emerge.
2002's critically-acclaimed album Fashionably Late found Linda and Richard burying the emotional hatchet and also featured their son Teddy Thompson on guitar. Thompson Jnr has since forged a successful solo career and returns as Linda's chief musical foil and arranger on her most recent album, 2007's Versatile Heart.
Versatile Heart: collaborators from Rufus Wainwright to Antony Hegarty
As if to finally acknowledge Linda Thompson's contribution to the British folk-roots scene, Versatile Heart (www.rounderstore.com) features star-studded collaborators both old and new. There's a link to the 1960s as Nick Drake's string arranger Robert Kirby adds a Bryter Layter-style chamber-folk arrangement to Stay Bright #2. Alternatively, modern day admirers Rufus Wainwright and Antony Hegarty co-write and duet with Thompson on the moving ballad Beauty.
Indeed, it's because Versatile Heart is willing to embrace both past and present that it succeeds. Traditional English airs like Katy Cruel and Whisky Bob Copper & Me are British folk staples and a fiery return to Thompson's roots. Her stark, acoustic version of Tom Waits' anti-war Day After Tomorrow reminds us that Folk Music was once an essential vehicle for protest and the title track demonstrates her pop sensibility remains intact.
There's the occasional lapse in quality. Do Your Best For Rock'n'Roll is a little too close to Dolly Parton territory for comfort and Give Me a Sad Song is well-performed but perfunctory. Mostly, though, Thompson's voice retains all the heartbreaking clarity of her early work and songs like Blue & Gold and the gorgeous Go Home are seductive enough to attract both the long-term fan and the merely curious.
One of the Great Voices of British Folk
It's taken Linda Thompson (www.myspace.com/lindathompsonmusic) a long time to effect a fully-fledged solo career . She's been forced to contend with ill-health, the perpetual shadow cast by her ex-husband's musical catalogue and relegation behind Sandy Denny and the reclusive Anne Briggs when critics discuss the great voices of British Folk. Versatile Heart, though, is a strong, contemporary comeback from a performer who demands to be judged on her own terms.
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