In 1990,
Richard Thompson wrote the score for Sweet Talker, a pleasant but unremarkable Australian comedy starring Bryan Brown and Karen Allen, and a year later
Thompson's record label gave the film's soundtrack album an American release (which is more than can be said of the film itself, which quietly went straight to video on these shores).
Thompson wrote four songs for the film, including a pair of upbeat pop/rockers, "To Hang a Dream On" and "Put Your Trust in Me," and an amusing country & western pastiche, "Boomtown," for which
Thompson handed the vocal chores over to John Andrew Parks. But the rest of the album is devoted to instrumental pieces, and while they're skillful and well played (and feature
Thompson's usual stable of longtime sidemen, including
Simon Nichol,
Dave Mattacks, and
John Kirkpatrick), they're clearly background music; they weren't designed to have an especially strong personality of their own, and for the most part they don't. As a result, the
Sweet Talker soundtrack is the sort of thing that will please loyal fans but won't do much for the casual observer, though Capitol Records is to be commended for allowing
Thompson's U.S. fans to hear some above average marginalia at domestic rather than import prices. ~ Mark Deming