Old Kit Bag [ENHANCED]

And I love this album. In its variety, spareness, emotional intensity, and simple beauty, it rivals any single album Thompson has done since the fabled Shoot Out the Lights. I have seen some reviews that describe The RT Band of this recording as a "power trio" a la Cream or Mountain (sic) (I know - a quartet). If one had only heard the second track, the scalding "Jealous Words," one might credibly carry this point. But Thompson here displays all his influences - Celtic, Scottish, Middle Eastern, American (jazz, blues, rock, pop) Caribbean - in brilliantly realized, lapidary tracks. And The Old Kit Bag also has Thompson's obligatory shot - two very good ones, actually -at a commercial single (the haunting "Gethsemene" and the rousing "She Said It Was Destiny").

Fans expecting guitar pyrotechnics - Thompson's signature wheeling, careering, soaring, jagged figures and explorations - are unlikely to be disappointed, but little here would qualify as fiery and, throughout, Thompson exhibits an extraordinary, albeit dense and imaginative, restraint. This I must attribute to the spare format and the tasteful production of John Chelew (Los Lobos, Blind Boys of Alabama), who put Thompson's boundless good musical taste on excellent display with the minimum take sessions. This recording also marks Thompson's first outing on an Indie label, Cooking Vinyl/spinArt, and he is well served by the connection (the packaging is attractive and useful),

A few other tracks require special citation: the chilling "Outside of the Inside" might be heard either as lambasting of Islamic extremism or, oddly, as an attempt to render the Taliban perspective sympathetically - Thompson is a convert to Sufi Islam. In light of his own comments on the extremists, however, the former perspective is the accurate one. In the disarming "One Door Opens," Thompson bounces along (in duetto with Judith Owen, another of his madrigal-clear accompanying voices) in a lively theme, but the lyrics are typically, acerbically Thompsonesque - it's tripping, exceedingly tuneful performance that will stay in your head. Long time collaborator, acoustic-bassist Danny Thompson (no relation) gives a lovely account of his art (the production here is particularly good - you can hear the resonant wood, and on several tracks - particularly "A Love You Can't Survive" - DT plays arco most movingly).

The US release of The Old Kit Bag also has a "bonus CD" that includes two tracks from Thompson's "1000 Years of Popular Song" roadshow, which he has recently committed to CD (at a nearly prohibitive price) and a Quicktime short clip from a BBC documentary, "A Solitary Life." This is marketing, true, but one of these sides, "So Ben Mi Ca Bon Tempo," from late Medieval-early Renaissance Italy, features bravura Thompson lute work (on guitar); the other song is Prince's "Kiss" (a hoot). (He also performs Brittney's "Whoops" on the full CD).

This is mature, densely concentrated, tannic, and long-finishing Richard Thompson. Devotees will be thrilled. Newcomers will be stunned. "Imagine encountering," wrote Kurt Loder in Rolling Stone 20 years ago in a review that sent me straight to the record shop, "here in the Eighties, someone who had never heard of Jimi Hendrix, who had never been moved by the great singers and session groups of golden-age Motown, or who, by whatever unimaginable means, had managed to remain incognizant of the collected musical masterworks of Lennon and McCartney...And yet, how many Americans remain unaware of the work of Richard Thompson, the richly gifted guitarist, songwriter and singer." Spot on, but, alas, this statement still stands. Brilliant songwriter. The most distinctive and imaginative guitarist on record. A singer of power and emotional subtlety.

Earlier this week I heard Richard Thompson in Washington D.C., in a refurbished theater - Club 9:30, the city's premier alternative venue - off U Street, in the heart of Ellington Country. All I kept thinking of in that context was Ellington's famous superlative: "beyond category." So it is. The Old Kit Bag is another Richard Thompson gem.

Quite a few reviewers here have wrestled with the question of where this album ranks in the Thompson oeuvre. But honestly, who cares? This is gorgeous stuff, dense, layered, immensely satisfying, like a bottle of wine from the Arabian Nights you can keep drinking and never exhaust. One of the pleasures of Thompson's broad grasp of music and musical history is that he can sound groundbreaking for 2003, or groundbreaking circa 1596, or even -- strange, but true -- both of these at the same time. Richard Thompson is truly a minstrel in rocker's clothing, and Old Kit Bag, like so much of his work, is both playful and dark, as sweet as it is weighed down by the accumulated melancholy of centuries. Oops, he hath done it again.