Sweet Warrior
Label: Shout! Factory
Length: LP
Rated: NONE
Media: CD
Format: Album
WorkNameSort: Sweet Warrior
Richard Thompson’s catalog includes devastating songwriting and jaw-dropping lead guitar work, cataclysmic rockers and poignant ballads. So the bar is set impossibly high. And with each successive release of new material, the breakdown usually works out to a handful of cuts to keep and a majority to sit comfortably through, then forever discard. Who remembers more than a couple of tracks from each of his albums anyhow? It’s not unlike the way veteran acts treat their catalog in concert. As per usual, Thompson errs on the side of length: 14 cuts and 68 minutes. Sweet Warrior features several topical tunes that suggest, if not address, current wartime conditions (‘Dad’s Gonna Kill Me,â?� as in Baghdad, being the most literal). They’re thought-out, compassionate numbers, but less involving than his quiet tunes, led here by ‘She Sang Angels to Rest.â?�
This article appears in Jun 27 – Jul 3, 2007.