Shoot Out The Lights
by Richard & Linda Thompson

From Romanelli TOP 100 COMMENTER 03/15/2011 21:05 | #19205 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

Richard Thompson, a founding member of Fairport Convention, is one of the more underrated guitarists of the rock era. Shoot Out The Lights is the 6th and final album he made with his wife Linda, and it's easily their best work. 6 of the songs came from an album they recorded with Gerry Rafferty that was never released because they couldn't get a label to pick it up. After signing with Hannibal, they recorded this in 1981, with Linda pregnant. Richard went on tour without her and met his second wife. After promoting this album, they broke up for good.

Every song on this is beautifully done. They trade off on lead vocals with great harmonies, and Richard's guitar playing is perfect. A classic that you really should have.

This is one of those albums I would wager most of us read about before we hear (I know I did). My first exposure was reading about it in Rolling Stone's top 100 albums issue in 1987 (top albums of 1967-1987). Ten years later I actually found it on CD at Hastings and was ready to be disappointed. But this is one that is every bit as good as the critics would have you believe. "Wall of Death" is a great tune also covered by Nanci Griffith. Absolutely one of the best musical portraits of a disintegrating romantic relationship ever recorded.

Way back in the 90s, there was an Internet service called Firefly which asked you to rate a bunch of albums. In return, it would give you a recommendation.

Firefly gave me this, and I was none too happy. It didn't seem like something I would like, but boy did I!

I believe Amazon bought Firefly and used it as the basis for its recommendation engine. I would never have picked up this album. I l still listen to it and still love it.

It rarely gets rawer and more real than this record. Makes Rumours look like a walk in the park.

Surely one of the top singer-songwriter albums of the '80s. A beautifully put-together record between two humans at their wit's end with each other; Richard and Linda were going through a divorce at the time of recording. The mix between Linda's tender, thoughtful ballads and Richard's upbeat rockers, all tied together with the same wistful themes of their deteriorating relationship is excellent. Perhaps Richard doesn't get enough credit for being a top-tier songwriter, and a guitar player at that. Many highlights to pick from here, most notably Wall of Death, Man in Need, Walking on a Wire, and the masterful title track. Definitely a record worth a listen every now and then. (Edited)