Industry

Artist: Richard & Danny Thompson
Label: Hannibal
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 031257141420
EAN: 0031257141420
ASIN: B00000063K

Release Date: 1997-06-10

Industry

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Tracks:

Chorale
Sweetheart On The Barricade
Children Of The Dark
Big Chimney
Kitty 'Tommy, Quick! Get Up. I Can Hear Clogs...
Drifting Through The Days
Lotteryland
Pitfalls
Saboteur
New Rhythms
Last Shift

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you? me? us?
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Customer Reviews:

An acquired taste, and a difficult listen..........2006-08-22

...but the effort made is rewarded. I knew I had to have this one when I saw that it was a collaboration between Richard Thompson and Danny Thompson (and no, they are not related, for those who might be wondering), both former members of my two favourite folk-rock bands, Fairport Convention and Pentangle, respectively. And what a collaboration--the theme of England's troubled Industrial Revolution and its eventual end in the 1990s does not make for an easy listen. This is probably as close as these two men will ever get to singing Union hymns (or playing them, as DT doesn't sing).

There's a deep sense of melancholy ("Lotteryland," "Drifting Through the Days," "Last Shift"), distinct uneasiness and bravado combined ("Sweetheart on the Barricade"), and paralysis ("Saboteur")...yet there's a lightness and playfulness (the "Kitty/Tommy" instrumental) and some really swinging grooves ("Big Chimney") to offset all that. I strongly disagree with the reviewer who said this is a failed experiment; quite on the contrary, I think this experiment succeeds on many levels. Why do RT and DT never play any of these songs live? Does it really matter? Perhaps it's an acquired taste for them, too. But it's still worth a listen.

Work! Work! Work! Whoops!.......2004-11-25

No album about hard work, loss of work, or despair over losing work will likely inspire dancing in the aisles. Nonetheless, "Industry" takes on all of these subjects and still manages to get the feet moving in places.

This is not a party album (not that many of Richard Thompson's albums are). The lyrics deal with some pretty heavy emotional and social issues. "Sweetheart on the Barricade" portrays the level of defiance that desperation can lead to: "My heart it skips a beat/There'll be fighting in the street/But hungry folk forget to be afraid". The narrator fears for his "sweetheart's" safety but respects her immensely at the same time. He never suggests that she go home, or step down, and if the situation turns nasty, so be it. But the worries remain. "Drifting Through the Days" paints a bleak and miserable portrait of unemployment. No work, no meaning. "Lotteryland" depicts a society where the impossible odds of the lottery provide the only hope. "Last Shift" explores the helplessness of workers doing their rounds for the last time. No uppers here. With surprising contrast, "Big Chimney" rocks and swings contagiously. Churning industrial rhythms punctuate the play-by-play of an iron worker's job. Even the lingo seeps in with words such as "Santander", "Blue Billy", "barrow", and "sows". A joyous but backbreaking feel pervades the song. "Saboteur" contains some of the album's most provocative lyrics. A worker attempts to destroy the machine that fills his days. Faced with the monster, he finds that he can't do it. A strange sense of beauty and awe stop him. Some of Thompson's best lyrics are showcased here.

This album's music sounds different than other Thompson projects. Likely the collaboration with bassist Danny Thompson explains this. For one, the album features a lot of horns. It swings more than it rocks. Quite a contrast to Thompson's 1996 "You?Me?Us?" and 1999's "Mock Tudor". Second, out of 11 songs on "Industry" 5 are instrumentals (all composed by Danny Thompson). These provide musical interpretations of the album's theme as well as interesting segueways between songs. All of these, in addition to the experimental nature of the album as a whole and the collaboration, make for a unique, highly listenable, provocative, and yes, a slightly depressing, album.

A failed experiment.......2002-01-25

Heresy in the RT world...I do not like this and rarely play it. Lots of smart people like it, but I think they like its sentiment more than its music.

Richard Thompson is in my CD player almost all the time. His best songs, and there are many many many of them, evoke emotion, thought, passion, hope, and despair. This is just a glum, and somewhat anachronistic, look at the mechanized world.

I too wish the world were different. But Richard, I've seen you in concert many times, and you don't play stuff from this one very often. I suspect there's a reason.

A beautiful project with a folk-rock all-stars lineup!.......2001-10-18

The great, terribly underrated Richard Thompson (once of Fairport Convention and now an accomplished and incomparable "solo" artist), the tremendous double-bassist Danny Thompson (formerly of the Pentangle, but no less deserving of praise for his more recent jazz fusion work), the sterling violinist Peter Knight (member of Steeleye Span), and the incredibly versatile wind-instrumentalist Tony Roberts (of the John Renbourn Group and the Danny Thompson trio) and others team up for an entire CD of excellently produced vocal and instrumental socioeconomic commentary. Richard's lyrics are at their absolute most poignant, and the instrumentals works of genius. I can't say good enough words about it. If you like skillful and emotive music with lyrics about difficult subjects, YOU MUST BUY IT! But be VERY prepared for serious subject matter; although Thompson's audible wry grin and ironic humor ease the pain somewhat, some of the songs (and the instrumental "Children of the Dark", which you must read the liner notes to fully understand) has me crying harder every time I hear it. But there's more than a little fun to be had as well; "Big Chimney" is the kind of song a pig-iron smelter would have to be able to sing...rough, punkish, rollicking, proud, loud and indomitable but descriptive enough to make you understand why you really DON'T want a job like that unless you're the type for it, no matter the pay. "Sweetheart on the Barricade", a bluesey love song about a woman union organizer, is the neatest synthesis of ballad and protest song I've ever heard, and this song could be one of the best things to happen to both the feminist and union movements. "New Rhythms", an instrumental fusion of jazz, Celtic pipe music and industrial rock will have you dancing the factory jig while your mind drifts with the simultaneously harsh and beautiful imagery it evokes. In all, I think this is not only one of the best, but also the single most definitive record of the Twentieth Century!

Most Pleasant History Lesson You'll Ever Have.......1998-10-23

As a devoted Richard Thompson fan, this disc was on my buy list from the time I heard about it; but, as someone who lacks even rudimentary knowledge of English history during the industrial revolution, I wasn't overly excited about the subject matter. But dry this disc isn't. It's alternately jubilant and morose, but beautifully so. These moving tunes are enough to make one happy that so many downtrodden British workers had to suffer in the name of progress.

Richard's songs are the high points, but I'll admit a bias and a lack of knowledge about jazz. After a short opener by Danny and band, Richard plunges right in with the lightly swinging "Sweetheart's On The Barricade." It's just the blend of irony and melody that Richard's fans love to hear. "Drifting Through the Days," convincingly conveys a lack of direction or hope in its subjects' lives, through both its lyrics and its music.

The one out-and-out rock song on the disc is the frenetic "Big Chimney." Wisely placed amidst a bundle of somewhat gloomy tracks, its singalong chorus and optimistic energy change the feel of the record just enough to convince you that not every industrial-era Brit was moping around the countryside or crying in his beer.

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