duggup

Artist: Linda Thompson
Website: www.myspace.com/lindathompsonmusic
Track Name: Versatile Heart
Playback: flash
Download?: No

It’s break your heart time again, Linda Thompson has just released “Versatile Heart” and it’s just taken me back 30 years to when I first heard her and former husband Richard Thompson. All of the remembered bits are here, the timeless voice, the brass band, the production that doesn’t let anything get in the way of the words, and the words are needless to say about heartbreak and the breakup of their relationship.

The other killer track is Linda’s rendition of Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan’s “Day After Tomorrow”…

“I think it’s the best anti-war song since Dylan’s ‘Masters Of War’” says Thompson of Tom Waits’ and Kathleen Brennan’s “Day After Tomorrow,” featured on Thompson’s forthcoming album Versatile Heart, out August 14 on Rounder Records. Originally released on Waits’ 2004 release Real Gone, the song is an exquisite fit for Thompson’s bittersweet, emotive vocals and the stripped-down arrangement, which fittingly expresses the sentiment of the song, which was was written as a soldier’s letter home from the Iraq War. The song was recorded in Scotland with Linda’s daughter Kamila Thompson on harmony vocals and the incomparable John Doyle on guitar.

I wll confess to not having kept up with Tom Wait’s catalogue (although I still find myself humming “In The Neighbourhood” from time to time), if this is indicative of what he is writing I will have to go out and chase some of his latest works up.

I love this quote from the site…

She remains obsessed with the deep British folk music that she and her circle reanimated with the electricity of rock and roll. Like all great folk singers – Sandy Denny in particular, Richard’s partner in Fairport Convention in whose shadow she sometimes felt herself to stand – Linda Thompson has an ancient voice, wilting, wounded and wise. She sings with the conviction of an eyewitness of thieves, beggars, drunks, street urchins and circus freaks, spurned lovers and murdering swine, centuries-gone.

What else can you say… oh I know. Don’t miss it. Seriously recommended.

thatch is fascinated by guitars, music, guitars, production, silly noises, guitars and used to be a musician. Did I mention the thing about the guitars?
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