RICHARD THOMPSON | LIVE REVIEW
Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay, Sun 15 Oct
After 50 years of performing on stages across the world, Richard Thompson was still awed by the WMC stage when he stepped onto it, guitar in hand. “Nice place you’ve got here. Quite intimidating.” Slightly less intimidated were support act Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker: they’d played the Millennium Centre two years ago, when they won the BBC Folk Duo Of The Year award. With covers of Fairport Convention and Nick Drake, Clarke admitted she was playing to the crowd – but their polished performance and lilting originals went down just as well in a well-judged warm-up set.
The man who launched folk-rock in the late 1960s was in incredible form. Thompson has long been regarded as one of the greatest guitarists to come from these British Isles; his electric playing is something special but his acoustic playing is something else altogether. It’s not just the self-accompanying techniques he uses, but the different tones he creates. It’s like listening to an orchestra of guitars coming from one man and one instrument. Luckily for lovers of music, he’s not just a virtuoso player. Thompson has written dozens of perfectly crafted songs and he has one of the best voices in folk, with incredible control and clarity.
All this came across brilliantly, and hearing Thompson’s guitar made large by the WMC speakers and stunning acoustics was really something. Yet I couldn’t help thinking we would all have enjoyed it more if the gig had been a little more intimate – Thompson included. The usual repartee between singer and audience was hard for him to pull off when he was too far away to hear.
It wasn’t until the set was coming to a close that it felt Thompson was really firing. Classics like Tear Stained Letter and Vincent Black Lightning 1952 got the crowd singing and cheering as much as his trademark ballad Beeswing brought a perfect hush of reverential quiet. Much of the material was taken from his recent trio of career-spanning Acoustic releases. They are a perfect introduction and a must for his hardcore fans. Get into these albums and then go and see this giant of folk live – maybe somewhere a little bit smaller.
words JOHN-PAUL DAVIES