Product Description

No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: CD
Artist: THOMPSON,RICHARD & LINDA
Title: SHOOT OUT THE LIGHTS
Street Release Date: 11/01/1991
Domestic
Genre: ROCK/POP

Track Listing

1. Don't Renege on Our Love
2. Walking on a Wire
3. Man in Need
4. Just the Motion
5. Shoot Out the Lights
6. Back Street Slide
7. Did She Jump or Was She Pushed?
8. Wall of Death

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13370 in Music
• Brand: THOMPSON,RICHARD & LINDA
• Released on: 1991-07-01
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

Amazon.com essential recording
Real life intruded on Richard and Linda Thompson and turned Shoot Out the Lights into a harrowing masterpiece. The collection was difficult to create. Tracks from an aborted first attempt to record the album ended up on the Richard Thompson anthology Watching the Dark and the history of Linda Thompson Dreams Fly Away. It also became their final record together, lending extra poignance to such classically grim Richard Thompson titles as "Did She Jump or Was She Pushed" and "Wall of Death." The combination of Richard's inventive guitar work; his ragged vocals; and Linda's fragile, beautiful singing, all suffocatingly emotional, backed for the most part by longtime Thompson associates from Fairport Convention, make Shoot Out the Lights essential. --David Wolf

Customer Reviews

The Thompson collection starts here
"Shoot Out the Lights" is one of the finest, most organically perfect albums ever recorded, and the place to start for Richard and Linda Thompson novices, both for its devastating emotional impact and its rock orientation, which makes it their most musically accessible album. Not to mention that Richard's guitar playing has never been more ferocious or expressive as it is here, especially on the epic title track. As John Mellencamp once said about this album, RT's lead guitar adds another voice that expresses almost as much as the voices singing the words.

What gets overlooked in the conventional wisdom of this album being a chronicle of gloom and doom is that there's also a lullabye of great peacefulness in the middle ("Just The Motion") and an affirmation of living life to the upmost at the end ("Wall of Death"). Of course, the darkness and pain is there aplenty in "Walking On A Wire," "Don't Renege on Our Love," and "Did She Jump Or Was She Pushed?" but the point is, "Shoot Out the Lights" is a balanced, complete whole. It's about life, period, as all great art is.

As much fine work as Richard (though sadly, not the retired Linda) has done since this 1982 album, he's never topped this one, and the only albums in his catalog that rival it are "I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight," "Pour Down Like Silver," and "Hand of Kindness." It's a must-own.

It Don't Come Easy, But It Don't Get No Better
This is a dark, brooding and, above all, wonderfully, brilliantly difficult album.

Richard Thompson's songs are often scarifying; but even at their most dark and doom-laden, there's something purifying and uplifting about them as well.

Add his incredible guitar skills -- when he plays live acoustic, one would not be surprised to find that he has two extra hands hidden away somewhere -- and his own harrowed/harrowing vocals and Linda's beautiful floating voice and you have one hell of an album.

But, as i said, it's a difficult album -- i owned this album for almost a year before i stopped listening to it and started *hearing* it.

"Did She Jump?" is terrifying.

"Walking on a Wire" is full of the pain of *knowing* that your relationship is going bad, *knowing* that there's *nothing* you can do about it... and still hoping, dreaming futilely otherwise.

"Don't Renege on Our Love" rings with the knowledge that no matter how much you plead, he/she is still going to let it all go.

And "Wall of Death" -- while many see it as a song of hope and affirmation, of living life to the fullest -- comes across, in my hearing, as almost a case-study in depression.

All sounds pretty much like an album you'd go a long way to avoid, doesn't it? But it is, somehow, overall a defiance of that black fog, an affirmation of life, a celebration of hope against hope and fiercely loving even when love may be doomed...

If you're ready to step beyond simple boy/girl, moon/June/croon stuff and pop treacle; if you want some vitamins and some roughage in your musical diet, well, then...

This Is The Stuff.

Best of British Folk-Rock
On the cover we see Richard alone in the corner of the room with a photograph of his x-love and x-wife on the wall. He's saddened, angry, lonely and befuddled - all the emotions of a long musical collaboration and love affair gone wrong. The power and emotion of the release are enhanced by the fact the Linda is coequal in the recording studio. Their relationship is like "Walking On A Wire" - both are precariously balanced and ill prepared to fall. Richard is THE premiere British Folk-Rock guitarist: his style is powerful, unique and unforgettable. The guitar solos on both "Shoot Out The Lights" and "Walking On A Wire" will take your breath away. If Sandy Denny is the mother of British Folk singers, them Linda must be her soul sister - her voice is mysterious and sultry. "Wall Of Death" is a suitable finale - this is an anthem of survival. "Shoot Out The Lights" is NOT "Puff The Magic Dragon" cotton candy folk music. If you haven't been fortunate enough to have been introduced to British Folk Rock, start here with Richard and Linda.