THE LINEUP
The month’s best guitar music – a hand-picked selection of the finest fretwork on wax
Richard Thompson
Ship To Shore
New West Records (available 31 May) 9/10
Taut, barbed folk-rock that doesn’t hide the scars Imagine a row of guitars from a guitar-maker you admire. You know you’ll probably like all the instruments but maybe one or two will have that little extra something. It could be said that Richard Thompson’s albums are a bit like that, too.
Thompson maintains a taut standard for all his records, which are never less than serious pieces of musical craftsmanship, the lyrics always shrewd and incisive – not without compassion of a kind but avoiding sentimentality at all times. The result is typically great but, as mentioned, some albums from Thompson rise just a touch above the others, like the topmast of a ship on the horizon.
Opener Freeze captures people teetering on the brink of misfortune, the narrative propelled by a driving, piratical rhythm and an almost shanty-like descending melody, tumbling down like the fortunes of the song’s hardluck characters. Thompson’s playing is deft, effortlessly peeling off lines of double-stops from his (assumed) Strat, that seem imbued with the spirit of British folk for all their edgy electricity.
Thompson has an expertise for painting portraits of jilted men and, true to form, ShipTo Shore offers us one of his best examples since the brilliant Uninhabited Man, with What’s LeftTo Lose, which shows off his brilliant knack for chord changes that seem unexpected yet perfectly connected.
Overall, the album feels more consistent and coherent than his last LP 13 Rivers, its narrative and melodic thread as strong as a hawser. Masterly.
Standout track: Turnstile Casanova
For fans of: Fairport Convention, The Magpie Arc, Elvis Costello
Bill Frisell
Blue Note Records (available now) 10/10
Jazzman teams with classical ensembles for sonic delights You can’t pin down Bill Frisell. Like his jazz contemporaries, John Scofield and Pat Metheny, he never sits on his laurels and often creates surprise and delight with new flights of fancy. And that sure is the case with this new release. Orchestrassees his jazz trio augmented by two ensembles, the 60-piece Brussels Philharmonic and the 11-piece Umbria Jazz Orchestra.
The big version is a three-disc release (the standard version is two discs) with 23 tracks that are either Frisell’s own compositions or standards he has enjoyed playing in the past. There’s his own StrangeMeetingalongside Billy Strayhorn’s LushLifeand two versions of Ron Carter’s Doom, just for starters.
Central to it all is his guitar, often taking centre stage with his chord and single-note playin
