Richard Thompson

Assays of the nature of love and war—both personal and political—that are finely honed, alternately rocking with righteous indignation and pensively sad with Thompson’s stinging electric guitar punctuating the lyrics. From the plight of the IRA and encounters with bad monkeys, our warrior finds himself trapped in Iraq where “Dad’s gonna kill him and love’s going bad/no needle and thread can stitch it up.” He’s pissed off at a world filled with liars, thieves and cheating exes but also mindful of his roots in the Celtic folk tradition, with his grief at the funeral of a lover, “poppy poppy red flowers o’er her head.” His finely crafted lyrical responses to a caustic world are carefully, precisely delivered, laced with an insolent wit that cautions us to take care with the roads we choose.