Customer Reviews

Rumor & Sigh

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Looking back over Thompson's Nineties output, it is clear that this 1991 effort was the best of the lot. Rumor and Sigh's batch of songs mines familiar themes of broken hearts and failed love. Sometimes Thompson approaches these topics with humor as in "Read About Love." Sample lyric: "I do everything I'm supposed to do/If something's wrong, then it must be you/I know the ways of a woman/I've read about love." But usually his lyrics reflect a more realistic look at the darker side of relationships, as in "I Misunderstood" ("I thought she was saying 'good luck'/She was saying 'goodbye'"), or the melancholy "Why Must I Plead" ("All your bitterness and lies sting like tears in my eyes/And a thousand lovesick tunes won't wash away the wounds from my mind").

Thompson, however, is not terminally morose. He turns in an upbeat performance on the accordian and fiddle number "Don't Sit on My Jimmy Shines." And while lyrically "Mother Knows Best" is the stuff of nightmares, Thompson's piercing guitar keeps things moving along at a rollicking pace. And "Psycho Street"--which may not warrant many repeated listenings--exhibits Thompson's gallows humor.

The centerpiece of this collection though has to be the stunning solo acoustic guitar performance of "1952 Vincent Black Lightning." Almost ten years later I still get goosebumps when Thompson sings the final verse. [This song alone is worth owning this album. I still can't understand why it got left off his 3-CD career retrospective "Watching the Dark."]

Thompson is quite simply the English-speaking world's best-kept secret. He is an amazing songwriter, an unbelievable guitarist and a strong vocalist. It's a shame he is not a household world. Along with "I Want To See the Bright Lights Tonight," "Pour Down Like Silver" and Shoot Out the Lights," this is a must-own album for any serious Thompson fan. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

If my house were burning, before I would rescue family photographs, the deeds to the house and our motor vehicles, precious jewelry, birth certificates, family heirlooms, my grandmother's Bible, or my manuscript in progress, I would rescue my Richard Thompson music collection. The second recording I would grab would be RUMOUR AND SIGH (after I grabbed SHOOT OUT THE LIGHTS). Richard Thompson is the music lyrics equivalent to Geoffrey Chaucer. Like Chaucer, who creates a group of vividly individualized tale telling pilgrims making their way to Canterbury, Richard Thompson creates vividly individualized characters who tell their tales through Thompson's songs. They are complex characters: a vengeful young man just released from jail, a geek devoted to the accordian recordings of Jimmy Shands, a felon with a tender heart in love with a 1952 Vincent Black Lightning and a red-headed girl, and a forlorn man whose lover turned out casual, not serious, etc. Thompson, like Chaucer, is by turns whimsical, satirical, ironic, enthusiastic, tender, cruel, angry, surreal, and always fresh and deeply intelligent. But I've saved the best for last: Richard Thompson is a guitar messiah. Whether electric or acoustic, few guitarist can match Thompson's versatility and virtuosity. If you enjoy traditional British folk, sizzling speed metal, polkas, reels, atmospheric expressionism, Chuck Berry styled rock and roll, and sundry other styles of popular and progressive music, Richard Thompson is king.

Since the 5.1 DTS/Dolby Digital version of album review has been lumped in with the CD review (because of amazon's system being unable to distinguish between two versions of the same title), I'm going to address both separately. The CD is first. RT was especially prolific during the 90's. He rocked in the decade with the 1988 release "Amensia" and moved on to produce a substanial body of work during this period. "Rumor and Sigh" is the best album (outside of "Mock Tudor) that he produced during the decade. From the opening song the acerbic "Read About Love" to the character study "I Feel So Good" (an almost hit)the heartbreaking "I Misunderstood" there's hardly a misstep here. Yes, there can be 5 star albums that have flaws (I can't think of a 5 star album without them whether they be something a fan nitpicks or not)but the overall quality and power of the best material here makes up for even the lesser material.

I Misunderstood and I Feel So Good promised to finally break through to a larger audience with their clever MTV videos. Read About Love is probably one of the most stunning but less subtle songs on the album. It could easily have been written about the Internet and it's #2 usage--looking for Porn.

1952 Vincent Black Lightning is the type of song that Thompson has always excelled at; it's got a tight narrative, great melody and a tragic folk inspired ending. The only song that doesn't quite work for me is the epic closer Psycho Street. Yes, it captures the type of world we live in today but it's a bit obvious and a bit ordinary and predictable (particularly for a Thompson song). The best song for me is the often overlooked Keep Your Distance (in addition to You Dream Too Much).

The production by Mitchell Froom has often been criticized. He and Thompson worked well together; Froom managed to help Thompson shape his songs into a more contemporary mold with a number of clever production touches. Sometimes this could be distracting, somethimes not as on this album.

"Rumor and Sigh" continues to be one of the high watermarks of Thompson's solo career. I'd suggest "Henry the Human Fly" (which sold as many copies as the first Velvet Underground album if legend is to be believed), "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight", "Hokey Pokey", the sad "Pour Down Like Silver", "Shoot Out the Lights" and amazingly underrated "Mock Tudor" in addition to this terrific album. The "Watching the Dark" anthology is also quite good.

The 5.1/DTS version of the album sounds terrific with a nice mix (although there's no note of Froom's involvement Thompson is thanked in the credits section so he must have approved it). This isn't a dualdisc version (which hopefully they will release of ALL of his releases). The videos include the two shot for "I Feel So Good" and "I Misunderstood" both of which are extremely good. The menu page uses graphics from the original CD booklet (and album)and the lyrics appear perfectly timed with the audio portion of the song. I do wish that there had been concert footage but my guess is that Capitol only used material that they owned the rights to. The set also could have benefited from bonus tracks in the form of demos (or even acoustic versions of the songs) but what we have here it quite good.

1991 was probably a great year for Richard Thompson. "I Feel So Good" could be heard on countless radio stations. Listeners kept asking "who is this guy" and some maybe even picked up a few of his earlier releases. In that year, and thanks to that song, many many people heard Richard Thompson's music for the first time. Capitol marketed this album like no other Thompson album hitherto. At that time everything probably seemed ok between Thompson and his first major label. He has since fallen out with Capitol. They unceremoniously dumped him after 1999's "Mock Tudor". An indie label, Cooking Vinyl, released his latest CD (also worth a listen) and "Rumor and Sigh" is one of the few albums from Thompson's Capitol years to remain in print.

The album well deserves a continued and long life. From the first to the last song it keeps its delicious solidity. One of the best darn albums openers ever, "Read About Love", hammers out a story about a man who thinks he knows women because he's "read about love". It contains some of Thompson's most entertaining but disturbing lyrics (it's hard to decide if one should laugh or cringe at the story being told): "So Why / Don't You Moan and Sigh? / So Why / Do you sit there and cry? / I do everything I'm supposed to do / If something's wrong it must be you / I know the ways of a woman / I've read about love". This track deserves a place in Thompson's song Hall of Fame. "I Feel So Good", arguably a "hit", is a catchy sadistic number that happily found its way onto the airwaves. How many intelligent musical portraits of sociopaths can one hear on pop radio? Hmm... there are so many... it's easy to lose track... but here's a hint... NEXT TO NONE!!!!

Most, if not all, of the songs on this album stand out like neon on black velvet. Some, however, stand out even more, including: "Grey Walls" with its accurately morbid picture of mental illness; the solo acoustic "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" about a motocycle enthusiast who meets his end in the fine tradition of tragic folk songs; "Keep Your Distance" continues Thompson's almost obsessive theme about obsessive love - anyone and everyone can likely identify with the message here; "God Loves A Drunk" waxes on the problems of life, choices, and religion. The album ends on a very very bizarre and incongruous note. Is "Psycho Street" a pardody? An attempt at humor? An attempt to shock? Juxtaposed with the rest of "Rumor and Sigh" it almost seems misplaced. Nonetheless, Thompson was probably just having fun, which he greatly deserves after producing such an amazing album.

"Richard Thompson for Beginners" would suffice as a subtitle to "Rumor and Sigh". No better album exists to introduce a curious skeptic to Thompson's music. Though a great place to start, it's not a great place to end. This album represents only one mere phase of Thompson's long and diverse career. Hopefully those taken in will look to his other works after lapping this one up.

If you like what you've heard about Richard Thompson, but haven't heard anything he's actually done, this may be the record to start with.

My first Thompson forays were into early Fairport Convention. Gorgeous music, some of the rockingest, most melodic folk ever made, and if you've heard a lot of music and have patience, you can hear how much he contributed to that sound. His contributions as songwriter, even back then, were formidable indeed. But I consider his Fairport instrumentation pretty much buried in the mix, with the exception of a few songs ("A Sailor's Life," "Sloth," and "Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman" come most readily to mind). Those of us who didn't hear his extended Fairport soloing live feel cheated.

As I've gotten into Thompson, I've better appreciated his guitar work and especially his writing talent. But "Rumor and Sigh" is the record on which he cuts loose most on guitar, if you ask me. It thunders, wails, rambles and soars. "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" belongs on anyone's list of acoustic folk-blues classics. The first song, "Read About Love," not only makes glorious hash of the notion that good sex is simply biological, but features a rock wall of sound like few things Thompson has done. "I Feel So Good" is about as feel-good as rock and roll gets, if you, um, ignore the lyrics. Or better yet, accept the tongue-in-cheek violence and anomie that is so much of what makes Thompson's songwriting, um, fun, that's it! A full complement of Thompson's strange takes on love, hate, sex and the weird admixture among the three are sprinkled throughout, with ringing Thompson guitar (witness the thoroughly insane - lyrically and instrumentally - "Mother Knows Best." If you find a better raveup - anywhere - just buy it, whatever you have to scrape up).

Find out what all the fuss people haven't been making (and should) is all about. Get "Rumor and Sigh."

This really is a very good Richard Thompson record.

I know that some folks don't care for the series of Thompson records that Mitchell Froom produced, but really I don't see what the fuss is. Thompson's palette has always been too rich for him to be conveniently pigeon-holded as "folk" or "folk rock" or "traditional". He's beyond such labels. On Rumor and Sigh Thompson superimposes himself on the pop trimmings and AOR production and delivers in resounding style.

Appraisals of Richard Thompson always focus (with very good reason) on his guitar playing and songwriting, but it's his vocal performance that delivers the knockout blow on this record. He's convincing and totally comitted. The backing musicians - all of them top-notch players in their own right - match him at every step and the result is a record that packs a huge musical and emotional punch.

The songs here are superb, laced with Thompson's dark wit and his knack for juxtaposition. A highlight is the unforgettable 1952 Vincent Black Lightning which is one of the best and best loved songs of his extensive and rich ouevre. But it doesn't stop there: God Loves A Drunk is an unerring and wrenching shot across the bows of the pious. Mystery Wind is a spooky country blues that, like the wind in the song, finds it's way into all the nooks and crannies of life that we prefer not to acknowledge. I Feel So Good superbly marries a happy even carefree melody with a violent lyric about a sociopath just out of jail. Why Must I Plead is a stax-style soul ballad that breaks into a beautiful fiddle solo. Backlash Love Affair verges on heavy metal and uses medieval wind instruments to great effect.

Thompson only really cuts loose with the electric guitar on two numbers (Mother Knows Best and the aforementioned Backlash Love Affair) whilst 1952 Vincent Black Lightning is a less obvious display of his virtuosity. But for Thompson guitar heroics have always been a means rather than an end.

The only fly in this superb ointment is that Thompson perhaps does too much. Don't Sit On My Jimmy Shands, the joky tribute to Scottish dance music, and the disturbing Pyscho Street are by no means bad songs but are perhaps cleverness for the sake of it and unwanted details on what is already a rich and powerful offering.

Above all this is a satisfying record - superbly conceived, powerfully executed, by turns disturbing and moving, yet always accessible and hearfelt.

For those of you who think folk rock means dull boring, acoustic ballads bent on political commentary, performed by aging folk singers trying to keep in touch with a changing audience, you owe it to yourself to give this CD a listen. Thompson blends brilliant, passionately-crafted, multilayered acoustic and electric guitar and mandolin playing with unparalleled songwriting craftmanship. His lyrics will remind you of a combination of Warren Zevon and Tom Waits, his playing of Lindsey Buckingham and Willie Nelson. "Read About Love," "I Feel So Good," "Why Must I Plead," and "1952 Vincent White Lightning" are standout tracks.

What can I say that the previous guys haven't? This album contains some of RT's most brilliant pieces -- "Read About Love" is about the funniest thing he's ever done, and "Vincent Black Lightning" is perhaps his most moving piece ever. As always, RT's guitar-playing is extraordinary. He remains the best folk-rock guitarist on the planet, and arguably the best rock guitarist as well. His lyrics are biting and bitter, and his tunes get in your brain and rattle around for days. Boy do I admire this guy. And while I agree that a couple of the songs are a bit disappointing, Psycho Street, for example, you can always program your CD player to skip 'em. In short, if you don't have this album, you oughtta.

Although the previous reviewer,TheDana, is probably giving an honest review from his perspective, it is obvious he is very young and doesn't yet have the experience to appreciate the finer, subtle qualities of one the great singer/songwriters of our time. RT does not have a "pretty" voice, the best singers seldom do. As life catches up to you, my bet is you will find new meaning in the lyrics which seem so ludicrous to you now. A little experience in love and loss will temper your soul to a better understanding and appreciation of this exceptional talent. Give yourself 15 or 20 years then give us a new review. My guess is you will change your mind as life changes you! This is another outstanding work from an outstanding artist.

When Richard Thompson gets it right, there are few other artists who can stand up against his enticing guitar work, the candor of his lyrical ballads and the intensity of his rock. `Rumor and Sigh' is a heartbreaker and a resounding rocker - Thompson's tongue-in-cheek humor is the icing on the cake. `Read About Love' is a drum crashing rocker about a young guy who gets his love advice from Cosmopolitan, Seventeen and Hustler. Thompson draws the listener in with bouncing and hook laden rock, then follows up with jolting lyrics. An example is `I Feel So Good' where a released prisoner's vengeance is to break some lady's heart: the music is jovial, but the lyrics are menacing.

Sometimes Thompson is sensitive and compassionate (I Misunderstood, Keep Your Distance), while other times he's downright frightening: `Backlash Love Affair' sounds like a love song from hell. This contrast of moods makes `Rumor and Sigh' irresistible. As usual, his guitar work is dazzling (I Feel So Good, You Dream Too Much). And counter to Thompson's often contemptuous delivery are the angelic harmony vocals by Christine Collister. I'd love to hear a Thompson-Collister duet - no such luck here.

The flaws are minor. `Psycho Street' is incoherent and unlistenable; and `Don't Sit On My Jimmy Shands' is a boring country-polka. `Rumor and Sigh' is a treasure. Call it folk or call it rock, but definitely call it a breathtaking excursion.