Add my voice to the chorus that is hailing Linda Thompson’s third solo album of her revived career as a contemporary folk delight. Won’t Be Long Now is an intimate recording featuring many members of her family that masterfully mixes dark and light, sadness and humor, all sung in the remarkable instrument that is Thompson’s voice, somehow equally fragile and durable.
If this album consisted of only the one song, the first track, it might still be my album of the year. “Love’s For Babies And Fools” is a quietly devastating song about debauched youth that somehow raises itself up to become slyly triumphant in the final verse. She says she wrote it for (and about) Rufus Wainwright during his hard-partying days. Oh, and did I mention that this song is that sublime thing that many of us have been waiting on for more than three decades, a song sung by Linda Thompson, accompanied by Richard Thompson on acoustic guitar.
But there’s a lot more where that came from. My other favorite so far is the final track, the title song, written for her by son Teddy. It’s a jaunty folk song featuring Americans Amy Helm on harmonies, Tony Trischka on banjo and David Mansfield on mandolin; the lyrics are simple truths about making the most of today, and making sure the people you love know that, but it’s more realistic and straightforward than your standard singer-songwriter fare. Witness the final couplet in the first verse: “I’m too cool for everything / think I better live before I die.” It’s just the sort of self-deprecating, clear-eyed, wryly humorous lyric that her long-time fans will love.
As on her previous two post-hiatus albums Fashionably Late and Versatile Heart, son Teddy Thompson is a strong presence, contributing the title song and co-writing three others with Mum, singing harmonies and playing guitars. Daughter Kami is also there, and she’s becoming quite the singer with a strong country-western vocal style. And making what may be his first foray into the recording industry is grandson Zak Hobbs, who plays an electric guitar solo that shows a definite kinship with his grandfather’s style.
Linda has further surrounded herself with some of the English-speaking world’s top folk musicians, including Eliza Carthy, John Doyle, Dave Swarbrick, Susan McKeown, John Kirkpatrick, George Javori … and Mansfield, who I wasn’t familiar with but will now be watching for; in addition to mandolin he plays a lovely Weissenborn guitar on a couple of tracks. Kudos to producer Ed Haber for great work capturing the intimate sounds of Thompson and all her accompanists.
This is a simple and rootsy record in lots of ways, hewing close to the English folk tradition. As you can see from the title song’s video, a major theme is the sea, from the cover photo and other album art to many of the songs. Thompson and John Doyle wrote one, a tempest-filled shanty called “Never Put To Sea Boys.” She and Ron Sexsmith wrote another, “If I Were A Bluebird,” in which the young female protagonist learns that the affections of young men who go to sea are not to be trusted. Mansfield and Sam Amidon (one of my new favorite folk musicians this year) provide starkly stunning accompaniment on this one on guitar, banjo and that resonant Weissenborn slide guitar. Continuing the maritime theme is the ironically mournful “Nursery Rhyme of Innocence & Experience” in which a young lass finds that after seven years absence during which she grew up, her sailor still remembers her as a child. And there’s the traditional “Paddy’s Lamentation,” which was on the soundtrack of the Martin Scorsese film Gangs of New York, in which the emigrant crossing the Atlantic to flee the Irish famine gets sent off to fight in the U.S. Civil War. Linda and Teddy duet on this one, a stark arrangement accompanied only by Teddy’s guitar.
But not all is dour and traditional. The whole family has a grand time on Anna McGarrigle and Chaim Tannenbaum’s jaunty “As Fast As My Feet.” In fact Kami sings lead throughout the song, with Linda and Teddy chiming in on harmonies. And Linda kicks up her heels with Eliza and Martin Carthy, Swarb and others on one of those Linda-Teddy songs, the rollicking “Mr Tams,” about the English musician and actor John Tams.
A real treat is the penultimate track, the traditional English song “Blue Bleezin’ Blind Drunk,” a first-person tale of a woman who plans to get back at her man for coming home drunk every night by doing the same. Thompson sings this one a capella, and it’s a live recording from her 2002 U.S. tour in support of Fashionably Late. It’s a raucous chilling song, and a fine memory of the night I saw Thompson on that tour. On her Facebook feed and in various interviews she’s given around this album, Thompson has said she probably won’t be touring again, so it’s a good memory to have. But on the good news side for the fans, she and her family reportedly have another album about half-recorded already. Here’s hoping Linda Thompson keeps recording on her own schedule and at this high level of quality.
(Pettifer Sounds, 2013)
