The 1982 Listening Post - Richard & Linda Thompson - Shoot Out the Lights

 Reviewed by Julia Talbot

Released: March 15 1982 Richard & Linda Thompson Shoot Out The Lights Genre: Rock In Touch With Its Folk Leanings Allen’s Rating: 5 out of 5 Julia’s Rating: 4.5 out 5 Highlights: Walking On A Wire The Wall Of Death The lyrics of the songs are all thought-provoking and since the album is comprised of only eight songs, it works well viewed as one body of work. “Walking on a Wire” is particularly resonant in a universal way about being or feeling anxious. “Wall of Death” is a great final song to the album, since it extols exhilaration and gives the listener a sense of movement and a brighter future. While the album “Shoot Out the Lights” was released in 1982, it did not find its way into my fancy five-disc CD player until 1994 where it stayed there continuously until 1999. During that time, I got married and had a baby, bought a house and got pregnant with another baby. Mainstream criticism regards the album as one of the better break-up records (after Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors album and the Beatles’ Let It Be or Abbey Road). That being said, more alternative critical voices and Thompson himself dispute that perhaps it is not entirely about the demise of Richard and Linda Thompson’s marriage, although this album’s production did coincide with the end of their marriage, when Linda was pregnant with their third child. While many of the songs reference the kind of loneliness and isolation that many experience sitting in a relationship not having its best year, most of the lyrics are more globally written, tapping into those feelings and desires rather than going full bore on the break-up theme. To me, “Shoot Out the Lights” was the soundtrack to a certain sort of ultimate domesticity (never mind that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing with all these oh-so-grown-up trappings) that I very much wanted but was having a hard time adjusting to/making work. Hindsight being 20/20, a lot of these songs really resonated with the out-of-my-element, out-of-sorts, over-my-head, isolated lens of a young married suddenly saddled with two babies, a mortgage, and a lot of sleep deprivation, but who was very much committed to making it all work, come hell or high water. Through that lens, “Don’t Renege on Our Love” was more about the chaos that had overtaken a formerly quiet and peaceful life, as much it was a plea for us both to stick around even when the going was exhausted and overwhelmed. “Walking on a Wire,” summarized how underwater I felt about pretty much every aspect of my life at the time. “It’s too long to myself” perfectly sums up the sentiments of someone not allowed to go to the bathroom by themselves for three or four years. “Shoot Out the Lights” spoke of the distance two babies and a mortgage can put between two people who just a year or two before had nothing but time for each other. The lyrics to “It’s Just the Motion” both summarized the day-to-day and gave me hope that my struggle was worth bearing out — that my complete bewilderment at getting what I thought and did want would eventually settle down into something more manageable. My personal struggles and the lyric’s ability to personify them, speaks to the strength of the songwriting overall. Unlike the Thompsons, I didn’t get divorced, things did settle down and I did adjust and reconnect to not only my husband but to the larger world. It just took a minute. However, much of the analysis I found about this album, sells its lyrics short, settling for the low hanging fruit of marital dissolution and ignoring the universality of the lyrics and what they have to say about frustration, loneliness and feeling disconnected, or vibrantly alive. The noted music critic Robert Christgau noted in his review that “these are powerfully double-edged metaphors for the marriage struggle”, which seems spot on, but then interprets “Did She Jump or Was She Pushed” as a response song which Thompson himself has noted was more a global story of women’s frustration and depression about having their ambitions thwarted. Spoiler alert – since the lyrics reference “fingerprints right around her throat”, I think the bigger problem is whether or not she was dead before she fell. Christgau also interprets the bearded lady mentioned in one lyric of “Wall of Death” as a foreshadowing, despite this being the last song of the album, with the rest of the lyrics really being more a list of things that are exhilarating and how electric it feels to be completely and absolutely alive. While it could be interpreted as the relief felt from getting out of a marriage that was no longer working, it really could just be about riding an amusement park ride. Sometimes a banana is just a banana.