Richard Thompson Rumor & Sigh CD

Richard Thompson's albums with Mitchell Froom in the producer's chair tended to be stylistically varied affairs, and on RUMOR AND SIGH, the singer's distinctive English vocal inflections and biting guitar spar inspiringly with Froom's kitchen-sink approach to production. Froom found intriguing ways to cope with Thompson's own wild stylistic approach, ranging from dark, narrative acoustic ballads ("1952 Vincent Black Lightning"), through radio-friendly, country-tinged rock ("Keep Your Distance," "You Dream Too Much"), to demonic rock & rollers ("I Feel So Good," "Mother Knows Best'). SIGH also showcases Thompson's lyrical extremes, from the intense ("I Misunderstood," "Mystery Wind") to the daffy ("Don't Sit On My Jimmy Shands," "Psycho Street").

Though Richard Thompson's cult following continued to revere the

uniformly high-quality albums he released throughout the 1980s, by the

end of that decade he was finding it difficult to find the wider

audience his work with former wife Linda had once attracted. That

changed at the start of the '90s with the career-revivifying RUMOR &

SIGH. Producer Mitchell Froom had been in Thompson's corner since the mid-'80s, but it was here that his modernist approach meshed fully with Thompson's folk-rock roots in a truly serendipitous way. Such

traditional folk instruments as concertina and hurdy-gurdy share space

with Froom's battery of keyboards, creating a new and exciting paradigm.

The songs themselves are largely unforgettable; the folky ballad "1952

Vincent Black Lightning," the poppy "Read About Love," and the moody,

churning "Mystery Wind" are only a few of the many highlights on this

album of varied and complex moods. Needless to say, several tracks

feature Thompson letting loose some furious gutiar work in his patented

Bert Jansch-meets-Jerry Garcia style, a phenomenon on which his fervent admirers had come to rely.

Jerry Scheff (bass); Jim Keltner, Mickey Curry (drums); Alex Acuna (percussion); Clive Gregson, Christine Collister (background vocals).

Personnel: Richard Thompson (vocals, guitar, mandolin, hurdy-gurdy); Simon Nicol (guitar); Aly Bain (fiddle); Phillip Pickett (shawm, curtal, crumhorn); John Kirkpatrick (accordion, concertina); Mitchell Froom (piano, Hammond organ, portative organ, chamberlin, celeste, clavioline, echo harp);

Q (6/91) - 4 Stars - Excellent - One of Q Magazine's 50 best albums of 1991.