Rounder / Umgd
2007
Versatile Heart
About This Album
Linda Thompson is a meticulous craftswoman, seemingly incapable of putting out music that's any less than spectacular. She follows up her spectacular comeback album, 2002's Fashionably Late, with this stunning collection of ballads, proving to all that her creative fire remains undiminished. There are a few tunes by other writers. Rufus Wainwright contributes "Beauty," a poignant tune that Thompson delivers with her understated majesty, while her reading of the Tom Waits/Kathleen Brennan protest song "Day After Tomorrow" is positively heartrending. The song is written as a letter home from a young man in Iraq, praying that he'll live to see his 21st birthday; Thompson's vocal here is haunting, brimming over with raw longing and an almost fatal resignation. As good as those songs are, they're merely appetizers for the main course, eight new Thompson tunes, some written in collaboration with her son Teddy, and a new song by her daughter Kamila, "Nice Cars." On "Do Your Best for Rock 'n Roll," Linda and Teddy channel the ghost of Hank Williams, Sr. The tune suggests "Your Cheatin' Heart," but moves in its own unique direction, with Thompson's weary country vocal laying out her broken but still beating heart for all to see.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,4,5,6,7,9,10 and 11)

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