Fashionably Late is Linda Thompson's first album of new material for 17 years, and this gig was an equally rare event for a performer once afflicted with chronic stage fright. The new songs (mostly her own, or co-written with her son Teddy Thompson) are vivid proof of what we have been missing. Firmly grounded in folk idioms and traditional ballad forms, they feel as though they are bursting at the seams with intimate personal experience, even though there is plenty of artistic sleight of hand involved. For instance, Thompson introduced The Banks of the Clyde as a miniature autobiography - yet its sorrowful saga of displacement, prostitution and poverty suggests she may be confusing herself with somebody else.
But her dry wit and throwaway asides were integral to a performance that cut all the deeper by not taking itself too seriously. Reassuringly flanked by Teddy and her daughter Kamila, plus an extra guitarist and Martin Green on accordion, Thompson fumbled with lyric sheets and fiddled with her earpiece as if she had wandered on stage by accident, unrehearsed and taken unawares. Apparently her children call her Shozzy, because she looks like Sharon Osbourne while being as confused as Ozzy. But once she started singing, every detail of phrasing and arrangement dropped precisely into place.
Thompson's ad hoc style wouldn't work for everybody, but it is a perfect match for her material and her personality, allowing her to slip easily between life and art without letting you see the joins. Introducing Weary Life, she joked that it really ought to be Cheery Life, such is her buoyant state of mind - but that didn't diminish the persuasiveness of the song. A new one, Never the Bride, prompted some droll observations on how little the content of the piece reflected Thompson's real-life marital history.
She prefaced a staggeringly powerful Telling Me Lies - how many tons of experience are carried in the line "You don't know what a man is until you have to please one"? - by thanking Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt for recording it and earning her a small fortune. Teddy, standing beside her, was making cupping motions with his hands. He explained that he was catching the names as his mother dropped them.
If Thompson were as good at picking racehorses as she is at selecting material, she could retire today, because her choices were impeccable, from the resplendent harmonies and surging motion of No Telling to her saga of stoical widowhood, Miss Murray, and a climactic I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight. She really should do this more often.
