Combat Rock: Richard Thompson

| Print Post This | Like (0) | Comments (1)

FROM HIS DAYS with British folk-rock pioneers Fairport Convention through a stormy decade with his ex-wife, Linda, and on into a long solo career, Richard Thompson has been drawn like a war correspondent to sites of conflict.

The most combative track on Thompson's new "Sweet Warrior" is "Dad's Gonna Kill Me," a brutal, grunt's-eye view of the fighting in Iraq ("Dad" being both Baghdad and paternalistic Uncle Sam).

Although the song has drawn its share of heckling when Thompson has performed it live, as he and his band surely will at the 9:30 Club Friday, "On the whole, the reaction is positive," he said. "The troops who have heard it ... are almost all positive. They all like it, and they think it expresses their experience. The families of troops generally hate it."

"Obviously, if you have a kid over there, you feel that your son or daughter is ... fighting for freedom and democracy," Thompson continued. "I don't think this war has anything to do with freedom or democracy."

It would be a mistake, however, to think of the new disc, which takes its name from a Spenser sonnet, as a strictly topical album. Thompson has always been interested in the myriad ways people fail to get along, his acid pen and stinging guitar at the ready.

And he has won one of the most devoted of cult followings by continuing to give his audience what it's not quite prepared for. The lovelorn "Poppy-Red" maintains tension with a weird upward modulation mid-verse. The chorus of the energetic rocker "Bad Monkey" seems to be going one way, then refuses to resolve according to custom.

Thompson's greatest talent may be for misdirection. "Even the simplest song, it's a nice thing if it goes somewhere that you're not expecting," he said when asked about his predilection for throwing us off his trail. "The Beatles were masters of doing that. Someone like Tom Petty is fantastic at having a really simple song structure that just twists a little bit. ...You have to try to have surprise in music."

» 9:30 Club, 815 V St. NW; Fri.,8 p.m. doors, $35; 202-265-0930. (U St.-Cardozo)

Written by Express contributor Glenn Dixon
Photo courtesy Shorefire