Richard Thompson - Electric

When I reviewed Richard Thompson's last album, the live document Dream Attic, I pointed out how ridiculous it was that a man the same age as my mother was putting out better rock music than 95% of young bands. I'll give them a pass on technical ability, and obviously lacking Thompson's nearly 50 years' experience is a handicap, but there's no excuse for them to be outdone in the category of raw enthusiasm. Young bands, you had three years to get your shit together, but Richard Thompson has owned your ass again!

Thompson assembled what he calls a "less powerful power trio" - less powerful than Cream or the Jimi Hendrix Experience - but then who isn't? The similarities begin and end with the fact that the Electric trio is led by a guitar virtuoso whose rhythm section can not only keep up, but easily so. In the EPK he described the music therein as "funk folk", and while that might not be entirely apt, Michael Jerome's drums make many of the songs inspire dancing, which Thompson will be the first to tell you people didn't always consider a separate activity from listening to music. Like other drummers such as Janet Weiss and Dave Grohl who are accustomed to playing in trios, Jerome knows how to sound "big".

While the standout track here is "Stuck on the Treadmill" - strange how Thompson's songs with the most epic solos tend to be my favourites - the real revelation is how inspired some of the quieter numbers are. Some slowly build ("My Enemy"), while others such as "The Snow Goose", nothing but acoustic guitar and vocals, stay tense and still for their duration. That one sounds like something Thompson could have written in the 70s with Linda's vocals in mind. Instead he takes the lead while Allison Krauss provides backing vocals.

Thompson isn't constantly reinventing himself at this point in his career, and individual thresholds for variations on what he's been doing for decades now will vary, as will where Electric fits in with his recent albums. For my money it's no Dream Attic, but it would still be a hell of a year in which it wasn't a highlight.

Related:
Richard Thompson - Dream Attic
My 200 Favourite Albums of All Time

Wild Flag - Wild Flag

Wild Flag is being touted as a supergroup, which it technically is, but it's also technically just what you get if Sleater-Kinney hired a keyboardist and replaced Corin Tucker with Mary Timony. Whenever any of those people release something it reminds me of my late uncle, who was a Sleater-Kinney fan in Australia from about as far back as you can get. He would have loved this shit. They'd have you believe it's also what you get if you cross a hamburger with a hotdog. Yummy.

The sound of Wild Flag is predictably that of Mary Timony's circuitous yet disciplined guitar passages grafted onto Sleater-Kinney's bombast, but it's predictable in a "why didn't they think of that ages ago?" kind of way. Minus keyboardist Rebecca Cole, these people have been playing together in various combinations for nearly two decades, and it shows. Timony is the kind of guitarist who can carry an album by herself - see her last two solo albums for proof - but thanks to Carrie Brownstein, she doesn't have to. The two of them have each other's backs all the way through and explore many tangents that would have been impossible on their own.

I admit to a certain amount of bias, but I've gotta say Timony is the MVP here. In addition to her exquisite guitar playing, she's technically a better vocalist than Brownstein, who has less range and sometimes adopts an almost cockney affectation, though to be fair, Brownstein's clipped delivery suits the faster paced songs which Timony may have stumbled over. But really everyone is on point here; Cole's keyboards expand the melodic possibilities while drummer Janet Weiss is in great form...but when is she ever not?

Wild Flag packs a lot of detail into 39 minutes, but is short on genuine proggy epics. "Glass Tambourine" more than satisfies in that regard, but "Racehorse" really overstays its welcome. I wish they'd scrapped that one, added another minute to "Glass Tambourine" and thrown in another short song. So while nothing here is as ambitious as The Magic City, the second and last album from Timony's massively underrated 90s band Helium, a lot of it is almost as catchy. That's more than any of us deserve.

Related:
Wild Flag - Romance video

Wild Flag - Romance single

Wild Flag is Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss (Sleater-Kinney), Mary Timony (Helium) and Rebecca Cole (The Minders), but then you either knew that by now or you don't care. Or maybe you knew and you didn't care. If that's the case, you'll have no interest in the link to their new single below.

Wild Flag - Romance

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