Richard and Linda Thompson - I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight LP

It’s been a little while (too long) since I’ve revisited this All Timer from Richard and Linda Thompson, and now I can’t get it off the turntable (a whole shift spent listening to just this is tempting…)

I get that people tend to rate their final album together as the opus of their joint catalogue for all it’s fraught breakup dynamics, but I much prefer to go out to see the lights than to shoot em out.

So much British folk of the 60s and 70s straddles this line that almost tips into a “‘ello guv’nor” Dickensian vision yet here the Thomspons offer up a socially realist and generous portrait of the modern UK working class. Sombre songs about the drains of labour, being broke, fallings out, and the dark side of boozing are also met with a level of joy imagining an escape from this reality as a Monday morning looms or even the simpler pleasures of hitting the town even when skint (gotta say, the title track gees me up like the equivalent of “The Boys Are Back In Town” from the other side of the Irish Sea). Linda’s vocals at their most haunting alongside Richard’s guitar playing at its most crystalline, punchy, and mercurial. Very few lights are brighter!!! –Mitch