Almost a sequel to 2018's
13 Rivers,
Ship to Shore reunites
Richard Thompson's core band for another confident, self-produced set that plays like an amalgam of his career's disparate styles. Its lean and lively 12 songs were recorded in a single week-long stand at Woodstock, New York's Applehead Recording by engineer
Chris Bittner. This follows a trend in
Thompson's latter-day output, a renewed emphasis on feel and collaborative interplay over studio layering. It also provides an efficient delivery system for his two biggest assets: great songwriting and sharp, inventive guitar playing. To that end,
Ship to Shore is one of the tightest collections he's made in the past quarter-century, exhibiting a wide tonal palette and a vitality belying his 75 years. Its title and maritime imagery are a little misleading; fans expecting bawdy shanties or a nautical epic in the vein of
Fairport Convention's groundbreaking "A Sailor's Life" will instead find a particularly saucy set of bruised love songs, droll character studies, and ruminations on time's cruel passage. The signature folk-rock style he helped pioneer remains a baseline of his sound, especially on the loping "Freeze" and "The Old Pack Mule," the latter of which segues into a sprightly electric shuffle that could have come from
Morris On or another early-'70s
Fairport family gem. The punchy "Turnstile Casanova" has the energy of a '90s-era
Thompson cut and slots right in among his countless wry odes to love gone wrong. Of course there is plenty of guitar work to be dazzled by, particularly the revved-up solos on "Maybe" and the wild improvisations at the end of "What's Left to Lose." It's stunning how a player so crafty and experienced can still throw himself into the deep and shred with such vigor. That he also remains a top-notch songsmith and vocalist makes him one of the rare triple-threats who consistently delivers. ~ Timothy Monger
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