Powerful, With Humour
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday August 9, 2008
TEDDY THOMPSON
A Piece Of What You Need (Verve/Universal)Teddy Thompson's fourth album is not just his best yet, it is also the album we've been waiting in vain (for more than a decade) for Chris Isaak to make. That is, Roy Orbison and Lyle Lovett in the body of a modern pop songwriter. Or to put it another way, a completely engaging mix of early rock'n'roll rhythms, '60s drama, country inclinations in the melodies and a lovely near-baritone voice, which occasionally flies into falsetto.Compared with Thompson's promising first two folky-pop albums, before that enjoyable interregnum of the mostly covers country album last year, A Piece Of What You Need is brighter, bigger and more aware of its potential. That confidence flows readily, from the pumped-up organ break in In My Arms to the way Turning The Gun On Myself has the languid air of Noel Coward crossed with George Gershwin, where its subject matter may be bleak but its delivery is elegant and its cocktail-bar tinkling just-so.There are some powerful lyrics but, just as importantly, Thompson has a light touch with humour, sometimes self-directed. It isn't satire, nor is it sardonic, but instead natural and amusing. For example in What's This?!!, where the tone is set from the gentle mockery of those double exclamation marks, the protagonist doesn't know what to do when he suddenly finds himself unable to grumble. "What's this, what's this, am I happy or something?/oh shit, oh shit am I happy or something?" he exclaims. In Jonathan's Book, the troubled author of a masterpiece without a title or plot yet, is "trying to create while the neighbours fight/says I don't have any inspiration/and the subject matter lacks invention" and ends up not having enough of a life for his book.Producer Marius de Vries brings the same smart ear for the fully engaged but never busy sound collection he has displayed with Rufus Wainwright. De Vries has a knack of finding the right tone and letting the sounds come in and out of the picture. This means you can enjoy the occasional Benny Andersson-style piano, the girl-group handclaps, little bits of low-level electronic noises and flashes of background guitar as much as the perfectly weighted playing of Richard Thompson (Teddy's dad) in Don't Know What I Was Thinking, the sudden bursts of mini choirs in the backing vocals or the woozy delivery and New Orleans trumpet solo in Can't Sing Straight.
© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald
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