New Releases
 Bonnie Raitt & Friends
Bonnie Raitt
Gigantour DVD Featuring Megadeath
Various Artists
Sweet Warrior
Richard Thompson
So Real: Songs From Jeff Buckley
Jeff Buckley
A Tribute to Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell
Memory Almost Full
Paul McCartney
NOW That's What I Call Music! Vol. 25
Various Artists
KISSology: Volume Two 1978-1991
Greatest Hits
Sly and The Family Stone
The Very Best of Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger
|
Richard Thompson
Richard Thompson, the "guitar god" (Chicago Sun-Times) whose "official catalogue… is a long trail of genius" (Rolling Stone), will add a new album to that illustrious body of work with Sweet Warrior, out May 29th from Shout! Factory. The disc is his first work of all-new material since 2005's Front Parlour Ballads, and his first electric disc since 2003's The Old Kit Bag.
Co-produced by Richard Thompson and Simon Tassano and recorded in late 2006, Sweet Warrior includes frequent musical collaborators Danny Thompson, Michael Jerome, Sara Watkins (Nickel Creek), Judith Owen, and others.
The album plays like a book of short stories set to music, populated with characters like a mournful widower whose "love makes her bed/where poppies grow over her head" ("Poppy-Red"), a divorcee who sarcastically reassures his wife that "when your friends point out you're stuck with/a Neanderthal for an ex/don't fret about it, darling/I still sign my name on cheques" ("Mr. Stupid"), a dissolute husband and wife each cheating on the other yet wearily resigned to "the job of man and wife" and "the old comforts of the missionary life" ("Johnny's Far Away") and in the album's standout track, "Dad's Gonna Kill Me," a terrified young soldier stationed in Baghdad (abbreviated "Dad") pondering his own mortality: "I've got a wife, a kid, another on the way/I might get home if I can live through today/Before I came out here I never used to pray/Nobody loves me here."
Musically, Thompson is in top form, reminding fans why Rolling Stone voted him one of the top 20 guitar players of all time with his gorgeously arranged solos and "dazzling fusion of rock, country, jazz, classical, Celtic, and Middle Eastern styles" (San Diego Union Tribune). The songs cover a range of sounds, from the gentle, late-afternoon ballad "Too Late To Come Fishing," to the bluesy, barn-burning rocker "Bad Monkey" and even the ska-inflected "Francesca," complete with horn section.
CD Track List:
Needle And Thread
I'll Never Give It Up
Take Care The Road You Choose
Mr. Stupid
Dad's Gonna Kill Me
Poppy-Red
Bad Monkey
Francesca
Too Late To Come Fishing
Sneaky Boy
She Sang Angels To Rest
Johnny's Far Away
Guns Are The Tongues
Sunset Song
 
|
Hit Network
Sweet Warrior
Pre-Order From Shout! Factory
Powered by Millennium Communications Inc.