Richard Thompson - The Old Kit Bag 2003 FLAC

The Old Kit Bag Tracklist:
01 - Gethsemane
02 - Jealous Words
03 - I'll Tag Along
04 - A Love You Can't Survive
05 - One Door Opens
06 - First Breath
07 - She Said It Was Destiny
08 - I've Got No Right To Have It All
09 - Pearly Jim
10 - Word Unspoken, Sight Unseen
11 - Outside of the Inside
12 - Happy Days and Auld Lang Syne

Total Time = 58:46

The album is markedly different from its predecessors, with unobtrusive production by John Chelew and a smaller set of backing musicians ("the idea was to keep it small. I did do a few overdubs – second guitar, dulcimer, single-finger keyboard parts, all the easy stuff – but other than that, everything was pretty much a live performance"). Thompson's electric guitar playing is more prominent than it had been for some time on a studio album. Despite the stripped down arrangements and sound, the album is stylistically diverse with Thompson even making a rare excursion into the blues on "I've Got No Right To Have It All". As is often the case with Thompson, the lyrics reflect darker side of life: "Gethsemane" deals with the disillusionment and pressure that 
follows an idyllic childhood, and "Outside Of The Inside" (which Thompson introduced on tour as "a song about how the Taliban see the West"), with its striking opening lines "God never listened to Charlie Parker, Charlie Parker lived in vain", is a chilling portrayal of the fundamentalist mindset. Ironically the move to a much smaller record label bought a bigger marketing push and healthier sales. Thompson had engineered a situation where live shows were his major revenue stream, but now The Old Kit Bag did better on release than any other Thompson album since Rumor And Sigh, entering the Billboard Top 200 and entering Billboard's "Indie" chart at number 5