Speaking of love, a while ago I waxed lyrical about Richard and Linda Thompson at the height of their musical and life partnership, and their beautiful song A Heart Needs a Home. Well lately I've been listening in a similar slightly obsessive fashion to the last album they made together, Shoot Out The Lights , released in 1982. Their marriage was pretty much over by the time it was released, as the cover tells you plainly, yet they were contractually obliged to tour in support of it. Audiences (not to mention the band) got to see the painful last rites live on stage as the couple struggled and bickered their way across Europe and North America before departing for what must have seemed by comparison the blessed relief of divorce. Shoot Out The Lights tells the death of their love in seven songs. Gone are the wide open spaces, tranquil rythms and deep yearning of Dimming of the Day or A Heart Needs a Home. In their place are insistent broken rhythms, jagged stuttering el
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson