Artist: Richard Thompson
Album: 13 Rivers
Label: New West Records
Release Date: 09.14.2018
“The way I see it, the world’s not fair / I don’t fit here and I don’t fit there,” Richard Thompson wryly observes in one of this album’s most straightforward rollicking moments, just before cranking out one of his trademark raise-the-roof guitar solos. Well, t’was ever thus. He’s too busy spinning stray bits of English folk, R&B, loud rock and roll and everything else to settle into any easily-labeled milieu. The man would have been a legend if he’d retired years (or even decades) ago, but even at a respectably grizzled age, Thompson keeps rolling like the most stubborn of stones.
13 Rivers is so titled because each piece flows with its own twists and turns; their courses can change gradually or on a dime, though always with a natural (if sometimes surprising) logic. Thompson starts off in unsettling territory, building an ominous low drone like the approach of black clouds and far-off thunder. Here his old-time folk roots run deep and tribal with a hint of brimstone: “I’m longing for a storm to blow through town / and blow these sad old buildings down.” The band soon follows through on the promise to create a tempest of their own, hitting a hair-raising crescendo like Dire Straits crossed with Black Sabbath.
The other tracks of this baker’s dozen continue switching tones from grim to cathartic, bittersweet or even occasionally hopeful. He’s never been one for too much sunshine, and 13 Rivers is actually a shade darker than usual: he paints a most unflattering character portrait with the moody “Dog in You” and calls down thunder with the clattering “Rattle Within” or “Bones of Gilead.” As perhaps best illustrated in “No Matter” with its tortured verses and surprisingly optimistic outro, the small rays of light and the bleakness can’t exist without each other. These themes are honest and always unflinchingly real.
This is what always gives Thompson’s songs their punch and their staying power. His fretwork remains superb, either electrifying at the high points or humbly simple when called for. There are several potential barn-burners here that’ll doubtlessly set the stage on fire once they get played live. Still, 13 Rivers sinks in most due to a starkly powerful mix of sweat, blood, dust and tears. Rather than aging gracefully—something that always would have been out of character anyway—he’s doing it like 30-year-old Scotch, offering a serious bite while reaching further and richer depths.
—Geno Thackara
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