Richard Thompson recalls his 1980s solo heyday on Ship to Shore — album review

“We thank you all for your love down the years,” sings Richard Thompson on “We Roll”, the closing track on his new album. “We hope we brought you some joy and some tears . . . It’s near the end now and the curtain’s coming down.” This valedictory note is a blind; he is singing in the persona of the leader of a travelling band who promises to be “back again/this year, next year, I can’t tell you when.”

If Thompson has been contemplating a half-century-long career — next month he will celebrate his 75th birthday with a concert at the Royal Albert Hall — then his nostalgia comes across in his new album. Ship to Shore sounds at times like a greatest hits release.

Even more than Fairport Convention in its imperial phase, the interplay between Thompson’s guitars and those of Bobby Eichorn recalls the 1980s heyday of the former’s solo career. “Trust” chugs like an out-take from Daring Adventures; “Turnstile Casanova” has the fuzzed shadow of electric guitar that powers Across a Crowded Room; “What’s Left to Lose” has the sharp flicks of “Hand of Kindness”. “The Old Pack Mule” starts like a stablemate of the Albion Band’s “Poor Old Horse” but then turns into a parable of capitalism, or at least of the human condition.

The songs’ settings leap between centuries and continents. On “Singapore Sadie” we are in the dying days of the British empire. “The Fear Never Leaves You” is post-traumatic stress made audible, a Falklands cousin of the Iraq-set “Dad’s Gonna Kill Me”. In “Freeze”, the arresting opening track, 1950s slang makes transatlantic hops with phrases such as “stuck in neutral, aren’t you, Mac?” and “you’re gonna find out in a jiff”.

On what is probably Thompson’s strongest album of this century, he and his band — notably Michael Jerome lithe on drums — are on fine form; the voice deepening, the storm always poised to break.

★★★★☆

‘Ship to Shore’ is released by New West