Richard Thompson, "Salford Sunday"

I recently found out that Richard Thompson has moved to Montclair, New Jersey, a town I know well not far from where I live. As a huge fan of his music, I find this to be very exciting. I am now on the lookout for an older bearded man with a beret and English accent. Also, knowing his sensibility, I think he will feel at home in New Jersey.

Of all of the rock artists who originated in the 1960s, Thompson has probably done the best work of all of them in the 21st century. Because he's less well known than his peers, this fact has largely slipped under the radar of those outside of his cult. While most artists of his generation have either been playing their aging hits to their aging fans or cutting mediocre albums in the last 20 years, Thompson has put out a staggering amount of great new music.

One of my favorites, Electric, came out in 2013. The title is truth in advertising, as Thompson ended his acoustic detour to cut some songs with his vintage guitar sound, which is like Jimi Hendrix if he was raised on English folk music instead of the blues. While there are some real ravers on that record, my favorite is the moody, slower "Salford Sunday." 

When I hear the song, it is like I am getting a message from an alternate life. It's from the point of view of a man making up in the grim, gritty northern English town, hungover on a Sunday morning. He has a "bass drum" beating in his head, but also a "cold side of the bed." It's a beautifully subtle way of saying that his significant other has left him. He partied and drank away his cares on Saturday night, but in the rainy, dark, and quiet English Sunday morning reality has set in again.

This song chills me because this could have been me, but with the Sunday weather a little different in America. When I left grad school for my first job as a professor I broke up with my girlfriend and pretty much resolved myself to a life of being single. I'd go out on Saturday night and have a blast, then would wake up the next day with an all-consuming loneliness on Sunday morning. It was the time during the week that I felt most acutely that I had committed myself to an unfulfilling life. That ended a few months later when my now wife and I connected, but I will never forget those grim fall and winter months in West Michigan, which is just as dark as Salford that time of year.

This song's evocative nature is grounded, of course, in Thompson's abilities as a songwriter. He is an expert at rendering the emotions of regret and resignation and restlessness. (This is not the emotional terrain that makes for pop stars.) There's no guitar pyrotechnics this time, just a beautifully lush riff.