News of Linda Thompson’s first album since 2007 will be released this October. Exciting enough news but there is a new song currently available, “Never The Bride” which is as down beat as you might imagine and as lovely as possible.
Linda is a patient folkie who works at her own pace but is always worth the wait. In 2002, I stood in line for a couple of hours to get tickets to see Linda Thompson at the Bottom Line –the sort of thing not much done any more, right? But, with her son Teddy playing musical director, she made it worth while. And she knew what we were there for and we got songs her former husband Richard wrote for her, “Dimming Of The Day (a song that has risen in stature) and “I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight”
But that was ten years ago, and the most I get to see her now is on Facebook (where she accepted my Friend request) and it is on Facebook where I found her new latest song.
Since the mid-1960s, Linda has been a fixture on the British folk scene, indeed Laura Marling is a modern variant on the theme. Playing on the fringes of the scene, at the same clubs that brought us Richard, Sandy Denny and many others in the London of the late 1960s. Linda sang on a fairport Covention supergroup, dated a member, Richard and Linda sang back up pon Denny’s solo album and Linda sang on Richard’s solo album before they married and performed as a due.
Eight years and six albums later, the duo released their masterpiece Shoot Out Lights in 1982. The greatest moment in both singers career, this distilled divorce album had taken them from Seeing to shooting the bright lights, as a man in need was told to go once and for all. In the middle of a US tour, the couple, who had embraced Islam, broke apart and Linda left never to return.
Since then both Richard, who always seems to be playing in town and who I have seen many many times though his recorded output is not what it once was and Linda suffered through losing her voice entirely, hysterical dysphonia brought on by her divorce so it took her awhile to get back into her career. Since 1985 she has released three albums, and Won’t Be Long Now will be her fourth. That would be four albums in 28 years!
Worth the wait? Judge for yourself but it is just very, not fragilem deeply felt. It sounds nit like anything else and the betetr, sort of sparse and subdued. It sounds a lot like Sandy, actually.
Never The Bride – Linda Thompson – A-
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