Teddy Thompson - Up Front and Down Low
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Teddy ThompsonBrand: Baker & Taylor
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
CD Release Date: 2007-07-17
Music Label: Verve Forecast
Soundtracks:
- Change Of Heart
- Touching Home
- Walking the Floor Over You
- From Now On All My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers
- I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone
- My Heart Echoes
- The Worst Is Yet to Come
- My Blue Tears
- Down Low
- You Finally Said Something Good (When You Said Goodbye)
- She Thinks I Still Care
- Let's Think About Living
- Don't Ask Me To Be Friends
Free Music Notes for Up Front and Down Low
Free Music Review: He's too cool for the room (so join the cult)
Hit: 5 Stars
When last I considered Teddy Thomp'son, he was building his cult. A very elite cult, because 'Separate Ways seemed to be so special that you could say, well, a lot of people just didn't have ears good enough for it.
Except it wasn't "special." And it wasn't "too good." It was great writing and great music and a remarkable voice, start to finish, without a single dud. I don't know why only a few of my nearest and dearest flipped for it. Maybe because it was depressing, in a wonderfully funny way.
Like this line: "I wish when the phone rang/it wasn't always you."
Not exactly a universal sentiment, is it?
So let's call Teddy Thompson an acquired taste --- until the day one of his songs becomes an unlikely hit and tens of thousands rush back to fall in love with all the great music they so breezily rejected.
And what of the follow-up to "Separate Ways"?
It's no follow-up at all. "Upfront & Down Low" is country. Classic country, if you will: songs by George Jones, Dolly Parton, Merle Haggard, the Everly Brothers, Elvis. Thompson uses a standard backup band, but he adds a string section, courtesy of the arranger responsible for the strings on Nick Drake's CDs.
Sounds like a vanity project? Not in the least. Teddy Thompson --- who didn't hear music that wasn't country until he was 16 --- understands this music completely. And delivers it authentically. But that understates. What happens in "Upfront & Down low" is captured magic, the alchemy of great taste and a compelling voice.
I went to see Teddy Thompson preview this CD in a downtown club. It was one of those rare nights: a small room, no more than a hundred people in the audience, all of them very much on the singer's side. Two violinists, a cellist and a string bass player came onstage first, then a drummer and a slide guitarist, then Thompson. Hard to miss him --- he was wearing a white suit. "I'm from the corporate office of Willie Wonka," he explained.
Naturally he apologized for the tone of the songs: "These songs are depressing. That's what country music is about."
But the songs needed no apology. They were flawless, if not exactly fun, and the title song, which he wrote, just might be the best. That song was, of course, the most depressing. Funny. I can't get it out of my head.
Up Front and Down Low Poster
Teddy Thompson's self-produced Upfront & Down Low features his angelic voice in distinctive and heartfelt readings of beloved country classics: George Jones' "She Thinks I Still Care" Ernest Tubb's "Walking the Floor over You" and Merle Haggard's "My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers." It also includes Dolly Parton's bittersweet "My Blue Tears" and the Elvis Presley chesnut "I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone."Yes, Teddy Thompson's parents are renowned folkies Richard and Linda Thompson. And, sure, he's spent the past few years touring the world with his good friend Rufus Wainwright, who recently wrote a song about their inimitable relationship called "Nobody's off the Hook." But it's Thompson's rich, twangy voice that deserves the spotlight. After turning out two thoroughly underappreciated albums of original material--it would be pushing it to even call them cult favorites--the lovelorn singer-songwriter takes on a dozen classic country tunes on Up Front and Down Low. It's a good fit, the bitter sentiments the inform his own work paired with the sterling melodies of Ernest Tubb's "Walking the Floor Over You" and Elvis Presley's "I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone." Thompson gives each of the tunes a masterful makeover, polishing them up with an all-star cast of players that includes Iris DeMent, Tift Merritt, and Marc Ribot. Wainwright offers string his own "Down Low" into the mix without breaking the mood. It's the kind of stuff that could represent a breakthrough moment, as long as nobody gets distracted by the fact that he was born and raised in a Sufi commune. --Aidin Vaziri
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