Shoot Out the Lights

Richard and Linda Thompson

album cover

One of the All-Time Great Breakup Records

There's nothing accidental about the order of songs on this strong-minded album, which takes just thirty-eight minutes to tell its story. It begins with a plea, "Don't Renege on Our Love," that voices a long-shot hope that a romance can be salvaged. From there, the duo of Richard and Linda Thompson—a married couple who'd been working together in various bands that followed Fairport Convention in the late '60s—trace the gradual (and jarring) final stages of love. They catch the cautiousness of daily communication in "Walking on a Wire," and anger in "Just the Motion." As things grow increasingly sour, Richard Thompson's grim outlook takes over; both the macabre "Did She Jump" and the closing "Wall of Death" describe a level of torment and desperation more common in novels than pop songs.

When they started work on this, Richard and Linda were a relatively stable couple, followers of an ecstatic Sufi brand of Islam who'd issued a series of trenchant folk-rock albums (I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is the best). They recorded and then scrapped a first set of tunes (several tracks are included on Richard's anthology Watching the Dark), and during the second round of sessions, which yielded this brilliantly sung record, the couple began having problems. After they finished recording, the Thompsons held off on releasing Shoot Out because Linda was pregnant; by the time it appeared, in 1982, they were strictly a professional couple. They began one U.S. tour during which Richard brought his mistress on the road with them, making it west across the country before calling it quits. Richard completed the tour heading back east playing solo.

Produced by Joe Boyd, the American responsible for the recordings of Nick Drake and others, Shoot Out the Lights catches a tension and exposed-nerve edginess that was rare in the British folk-rock of the day. Its instrumental tone—harsh, hurtling spears of electric guitar punctuating blunt expressions of hurt—is remarkable whether you take its lyrics as an autobiographical account of a real dissolution or just a songwriterly device.

Genre: Folk, Rock
Released: 1982, Hannibal
Key Tracks: “Walking on a Wire,” “Shoot Out the Lights,” “Did She Jump,” “Wall of Death”
Catalog Choice: Richard Thompson: Hand of Kindness; Linda Thompson: Fashionably Late
Next Stop: Suzanne Vega: Solitude Standing
After That: Scott Walker: Scott 4
Book Page: 775