Richard Thompson

The first song on this emotional bloodletting of a record gallops along, as if the singer is trying to keep up with a lover who is moving away fast. But since it's Richard Thompson singing, it sounds more like he is the one being hunted down, if only by the hollow agony of being alive. Yikes. Then Linda sings one that is even more desperate. It goes from there.

News of the wife's solitary return to England brings this relationship-in-crisis album home--including the husband's "bearded lady" warning in "The Wall of Death," ostensibly a synthesis of his thanatotic urge and lowlife tic. If poor Richard's merely "A Man in Need," I'm an ayatollah, but I have to give him credit--these are powerfully double-edged metaphors for the marriage struggle, and "Did She Jump or Was She Pushed?" is as damning an answer song as Linda could wish. (Grade - A)