It seems after more than four decades of record-making,
Richard Thompson has decided he prefers to have a musician in the producer's chair rather than a studio wiz. After producing himself since 2005's Front Parlour Ballads,
Thompson recruited fellow guitar ace
Buddy Miller to oversee the sessions for 2013's
Electric, which featured some of
Thompson's best six-string work in years. Two years later,
Thompson has returned with
Still, which finds him working with another songwriter of note,
Jeff Tweedy of
Wilco. The sessions for
Still were recorded at the Loft,
Wilco's personal recording studio and rehearsal space in Chicago, and
Tweedy and Jim Elkington (who has worked with
Eleventh Dream Day and Jon Langford & Skull Orchard) sit in on some tracks. Though the sound and approach of the album is a shade more ambitious and adventurous than much of
Thompson's work in the new millennium, rest assured this sounds very much like a
Richard Thompson album, spare and clean and allowing his songs and guitar work to take center stage at all times. One of the best things about
Still is that
Tweedy clearly respects
Thompson enough to stay out of his way, and the intimacy of numbers like "Josephine" and "Beatnik Walking" capture a feel that suggests you're sitting in the room with
Thompson and his rhythm section (
Taras Prodaniuk on bass and
Michael Jerome on drums). And when the production does add some layers to the songs, they complement the material nicely, such as the spectral keyboards on "Broken Doll."
Thompson sounds both comfortable and confident on
Still, playing and singing with incisive force while maintaining a natural feel that recalls the man's legendary live shows, and songs like "No Peace, No End," "Patty Don't You Put Me Down," "Broken Doll," and "Dungeons for Eyes" show
Thompson remains a peerless songwriter. And if closer "Guitar Heroes" stops and starts too much to keep up its momentum, hearing
Thompson put his own spin on the style of his favorite pickers -- including
Django Reinhardt,
Les Paul, and
Chuck Berry -- is a hoot. If fans were wondering if
Jeff Tweedy would turn
Still into
Thompson's
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the news (good or bad) is that
Tweedy helped
Thompson make just the sort of album that's made him one of our greatest legacy artists, and it's an example of why
Thompson is still worth hearing 43 years into a career that shows no signs of stopping. ~ Mark Deming