Richard Thompson – RT: The Life and Music of Richard Thompson (5-disc set)

Card-carrying members only, please — that’s the sticker missing from this audacious and daunting box set comprised entirely of unreleased recordings. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but RT: The Life And Music Of Richard Thompson is not for the faint of heart, even if you are or were a deep Thompson fan, or own the 1992 forefather to this box, Watching The Dark.

That three-disc set was a true career-spanning overview blending the singer-songwriter’s definitive released material with some stunning rarities, and as such, made a great starting point for those not fully versed in Thompson. This time we tap the collector’s mother lode, 85 unreleased tracks, and despite equally weighty attempts to organize the material (e.g. the accompanying 172-page book), the new five-disc set is something of a sprawling mess, albeit one with dozens of worthy inclusions.

RT covers some 40 years of Thompson’s career, and like Watching The Dark, it eschews strictly chronological presentation in favor of its own internal logic, grouping tracks thematically by disc. Explicating that framework, however, gets a little muddy. Between the CD cover and the liners, Disc One is referred to by the title “Walking The Long Miles Home” and the subtitles “Muswell To LA” and “Tales In Real Time”, and is described as both “a selection of ‘the world according to Thompson'” and “classics and obscurities and a richness of Richard rarities in versions which are previously unreleased.” Huh?

Fuzziness aside, Disc One offers several sublime moments, including a devastating trio featuring wife Linda on vocals: “Walking On A Wire” (live 1982), “Never Again” (unreleased studio circa 1975) and a lo-fi but nonetheless riveting “The Great Valerio” (live 1972). There are irritants, too. “Don’t Sit On My Jimmy Shands”, a fan favorite in excess of its limited charm, is presented as a live recording in which one cannot hear the audience sing-along it musters (arguably a good thing, but surely there were hundreds of other versions to choose from). Annoyingly, “Shands” is also one of too many tracks that lack full details as to where and when it was recorded in the otherwise trainspotters-only booklet.

And there’s those troubling disposable songs. Thompson has a gift for knocking out funny, topical ditties when the mood strikes him, a knack represented here by “Madonna’s Wedding” (Disc One) and the post-Super Bowl “Dear Janet Jackson” (Disc Five). In concert, songs like these can be hilarious as they catch you completely by surprise. But they don’t hold up well to repeated listening, and, drained of their immediate context, they are spoiled trifles.

A couple of the themes do take rather nicely. Disc Four, “The Songs Pour Down Like Silver”, is variously subtitled “The Covers & Sessions” as well as “Loose Covers”. And what cover versions they are, opening with a charming solo rendition of the Who’s “Substitute” that’s positively brimming with Thompson’s love for kindred spirit Pete Townshend. “Substitute” is joined by other appealing pop forays (among them Squeeze’s “Tempted”, Cliff Richard’s “Move It”, Plastic Bertrand’s “Ca Plane Pour Moi” and the Britney Spears hit “Oops I Did It Again”), as well as traditional folk songs in mostly elegiac arrangements.

The “Sessions” amount to three covers of Thompson originals as performed by Norma Waterson (“God Loves A Drunk”), Dave Burland (“The Angels Took My Racehorse Away”) and Judith Owen (a stunning “Poseidon”), all of which feature Thompson on guitar and/or vocals. The disc hits the home stretch with an otherwise ordinary “Wall Of Death” (Glastonbury Festival, 1992) that suddenly detours through Dylan’s “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” and the Searchers’ “Needles And Pins”, and closes with a killer Who medley (live 1990) munging a faithfully detailed “My Generation” into “I Can’t Explain”, a dash of “Pinball Wizard”, and eventually back where the disc started: “Substitute”.

Disc Three, “Epic Live Workouts”, is also winning, showcasing the often incendiary moments when Thompson stretches out onstage, be it brightly (“Valerie”, “Crash The Party”) or darkly (a gut-wrenching “For Shame Of Doing Wrong” with Linda, “Put It There Pal”). But there is no Thompson epic onstage like “Calvary Cross”, here in all its angular, angst-shedding/shredding glory, a truly devastating version from Chicago, 1986.

Disc Two, “Finding Better Words: The Essential Richard Thompson”, offers alternate or live versions of some of his best-loved songs (as voted on by fans), with all the usual suspects (“1952 Vincent Black Lightning”, “Tear Stained Letter”, “Wall Of Death,” “Beeswing” et al.) present and accounted for. Disc Five, “Something Here Worth More Than Gold: Real Rarities”, is, well, more of the same.

The booklet may be too dense for all but the hardest of the hardcores, but packaging touches such as the inclusion of a reproduction of a Vincent Motorcycle sales brochure are inspired. RT: The Life And Music of Richard Thompson isn’t the opportunity to reassess that it could have been; call it a deep dive into (mostly) bountiful waters with a guide you know is a world-class expert, even if you can’t understand exactly what he’s pointing out.