Richard Thompson: cheeky Mockery is fab

What makes a songwriter brilliant? There are many good songwriters working the over-saturated market, but the brilliant ones are a breed unto themselves.

Richard Thompson is one of the brilliant ones. Thompson's playing is an extension of his emotive impulses and he has the rare ability to find the commonality of experiences through the songs he performs. The songs, with their decidedly English sensibility, both invite the audience in, yet keep things in a fresh, focused perspective.

With his performance on Sunday at Cleveland's Odeon, in support of his breathtaking new album, Mock Tudor, Thompson and his crackerjack band put on an exceedingly muscular yet melodic show.

For those who don't know of Thompson (and that is a shocking number) his musical career has been an exceptional one. As a young man growing up in London, Thompson jammed with Jimi Hendrix and developed his more than remarkable guitar skills. He founded his first band, Fairport Convention, as he continued to hone his instantly recognizable brand of literate folk-rock. After leaving the band in 1971, Thompson recorded a series of albums with his former wife Linda. These included 1973's I Want to See The Bright Lights Tonight and 1982's Shoot Out the Lights, both of which were rhapsodized over by both the mainstream and alternative music press. As a solo artist he continues to explore the brainy folk-rock that has made him so essential an artist. Many in the music industry attest to his brilliance - Bruce Springsteen, David Byrne and Beck - to name only a few artists who count Thompson as influence. Many other artists have covered Thompson's work: Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt, Shawn Colvin and Evan Dando come to mind.

Thompson and his band played most of the new album on Sunday. Mock Tudor, broken into three parts, focuses on Thompson's recollections of his boyhood in London. Each song is devoted to a different section of the city as well as different time periods. Thompson said in an interview: "[London] is a love-hate thing. There are things about it I like and things about it I still hate. On the album the three parts are chronological; they're different eras. The first one is 1953-68, the second is 1968-1974, and the last is from then until the present."

Thompson opened the show with Tudor's "Cooksferry Queen." Immediately evident was the focused playing of the band, as the big jazz, blues sound came pulsing through. The song reverberated with a a marching beat. (Typical literate line: "She's got every rare perfection/All her looks beyond compare/She's got dresses seem to float in the wind/Pre-Raphaelite curls in her hair.")

In total, nine songs were performed off the new album. From an album containing 12 tracks, this is a particularly audacious move on Thompson's part, as the new material is still relatively unknown to the audience. As only the best songwriters are able to do, all the new material sounded utterly classic.

Thompson was generous with the hits he performed, showcasing "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight," which was lent a throbbing, Morphine-esque wail by Zorn's baritone saxophone. As well, Thompson performed what is possibly his best known song "Wall of Death" which has in the past been covered by R.E.M. After two-and-a-half hours of playing, Thompson and company did full justice to their set.

David Wilcox, himself a husky-voiced, Cleveland-based songwriter, opened for Thompson. After the performance, he had these words to say about Thompson and crew: "This is an amazing band. I get to see the discipline of perfection, and I get to see how they make it the only night every night." As for the Cleveland stop on the Mock Tudor tour, Wilcox couldn't have been more correct.