RICHARD THOMPSON • RIVERSIDE LEISURE CENTRE, EXETER, UNITED KINGDOM, 30 MAY 2004

He's been called “the best guitarist in the world,” and “England's greatest singer/songwriter” by the likes of Rolling Stone and NME, so it's no great surprise that Richard Thompson turns out to be good. What is absolutely shocking is the offhand manner in which his talents dwarf even the most frantic praise.

Jim Moray opened the show. With his dark countenance, black leather jacket, and torn blue jeans he cut quite the figure of young folkster on the prowl in the 21st century. His songs are strong and sensitive, variations on his self-avowed “socialist pain,” and his guitar playing animated sensibilities within the purest traditions.

It is on the piano, though, that Mr Moray is something particularly special. He plays fluidly but without the virtuosity to intimidate anyone at the local arts college. It is what he plays, the sounds he entreats, that are so special. They are pleasing and balanced, like a fine French meal, and Moray rambles the keyboard like a troubadour in a valley, leaving no key unturned. His playing reminds me very much of Ivan Kral's work with Patti Smith, beautifully melodic, and apparently obvious but only to the initiated.

Where Moray pleased the capacity crowd, Richard Thompson simply took over the room. Immediately, and without playing a single note. He has that special presence that is informative in advance, that uncanny combination of rare intelligence, artistry, and authority. And then, of course, once he started to play, it only got worse. Better, worse, better, both.

The first thing that strikes you about his playing, and it turns out that he is only warming up, is the crystalline manner in which he strikes his chords. They're sharp but he moves between them like a dance, his old brown guitar held loosely and modestly, in much the same manner a child might swing a Sainsbury's bag. It occurs to you that no one else plays chords with such careless precision and flawless timing, perhaps Keith Richards comes to mind.

Having made this particular insight, you're successively stunned as Richard reminds you of the same qualities in his solos, and then moves into his signature note flurries. The flurries are as carefully natural as everything else, and the denser clusters are more like explosions than flurries. Still, it is perfectly planned, even the moments of spontaneous expression: of what I best estimate in the neighborhood of 20,000 notes (please no one think I'm inventing a new statistic by which to measure music) there was not a single note or nuance anywhere but exactly where Mr Thompson meant for it to be. Ron Wood comes to mind perhaps, for making such a virtue of the opposite approach, but there really is nothing quite like perfection.

Thompson has a pleasant voice, most particularly blessed with the sincerity of a beloved parish priest. He dismisses musical fads in a manner that couldn't cause offense, and makes it clear that he is the king of every musical kingdom that interests him without asserting the case.

By the time he launches into “Outside of the Inside” he's projecting the sense that he's as much sage as a musician. Thompson is clearly on to something, placing himself in so many diverse spots, and expressing apparently eternal truths through the eyes of others as his own. Diverse songs pass seamlessly through the night like a mystical tapestry. Humour effortlessly blends with sorrow, slapstick with pathos. An indescribably soulful rendering of “1952 Vincent Black Lightning,” that tragic tale of star-crossed lovers and an especially wonderful motorcycle, moves many towards tears and the crowd to its feet in the first of what would be five standing ovations.

The early days of Fairport Convention were not forgotten. “Crazy Man Michael” was served up with unapologetic sentimentality. Dave Swarbrick, the legendary folk fiddler who co-wrote the tune, is on life support awaiting a lung transplant. Richard urged us to drop him a quick note at sjsheldon@compuserve.com.

Soon he's asking the audience for suggestions. They come slowly at first, but build. It's a knowledgeable crowd, but it's an Exeter crowd. We're very polite, and have to be lured into yelling. I thought about “Ghosts in the Wind,” but someone else shouted it, and by the time I'd settled on “When the Spell is Broken” Richard was agreeing that “Smiffy's Glass Eye” was just the thing. I think that part of my problem was that I couldn't think of how to improve on what had already gone before.

Of course the entire night was like that. The standard never dropped. Things concluded with a stampede of a rendition of “Shoot Out the Lights” to make you jump, weep, clap, slump, scream, smile and demand a pint of ale, all at the same time.

A previous encore, though hardly the night's high point, deserves special attention because it says so much about the man. After a brief monologue gently denouncing the past 25 years of popular music, Richard played at performing the Britney Spears standard “Oops!...I Did It Again.” It was abundantly clear that it wasn't his favourite song, and we expected him to cut off after a few lines.

He did not. He performed the song in its entirety. He did not perform it in a mocking manner, but rather pulled out what he could. I neither despise nor admire the work of Ms Spears, but Richard endowed the song with a certain dignity that is not as readily apparent in the original. When he sustained the climactic, “I'm not that innocent!”, the effect was naturally quite different, but entirely more substantive. Richard didn't particularly like the song, but he respected that a song is something special by its very nature, and more or less made a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

More famous writers than me have publicly humbled themselves by trying to communicate any sense at all of a Richard Thompson performance. It is only fair that I follow them off the cliff: Richard Thompson is a force of nature in almost Nietzschean terms. He is an alchemist who transmogrifies discord into harmony. His artistic sensibilities engulf force fields exponentially beyond any yet identified. He is no less than thirty-five feet tall, and he is the best band in Britain.

Versions of t his review originally appeared in FM Sound and the Exeter Flying Post.

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