Richard Thompson Don’t worry, that thing is definitely loaded. (Photo by Ron Sleznak)

Whatever you do, don’t let Sidney lead you astray…

I’m blogging today on short notice. The only reason I’m mentioning this to you is because the late notice put me on the road to today’s song–a crooked road, with armed checkpoints along the way. It’s wise to take care the road you choose.

I mentally hold a song or two in reserve for these occasions–songs that explore our theme but aren’t as research intensive. The “hip pocket” song I’ve been carrying around for a while has been Richard Thompson‘s “Sidney Wells,” from his 2010 release Dream Attic. You know by now that I’m a big RT fan, and today’s song will be the third one of his I’ve wanted to talk to you about.

Surprisingly, I found that I don’t really want to talk much about “Sidney Wells.” (Spotify, YouTube, MySpace, Lyrics)

What’s not to love about “Sidney Wells”? It is a song about a charming, serial-killing truck (lorry) driver. A true story seems to lurk somewhere behind it. It’s quite modern–not a romance gone wrong, but a psychopath doing what psychopaths do. We haven’t explored a serial killer song since Shaleane wrote about Neko Case’s Deep Red Bells. Plus, “Sidney Wells” is a slip jig (9/8 time) and involves some raging instrumental jams that, as RT himself says, are well-suited to the “savagery of the theme.” The song is quite literally a change of pace.

When I woke up early in the morning to write about “Sidney Wells,” however, I decided get the creative juices flowing by listening to a few of Thompson’s recent albums. I put Sweet Warrior (2007) in first. Something happened. By the time I put in Dream Attic, “Sidney Wells” no longer grabbed me. Probably a good thing, too. Bad things follow when Sidney Wells grabs people.

What happened was “Guns are the Tongues” on Sweet Warrior. I put that disc back in (yes, I’m retro that way).

“Carrie ran a murderous crew”

In this post, I hope to explore why “Guns are the Tongues” called me back, and in the process discover why, despite my intellectual curiosity with it, “Sidney Wells” did not. I hope we’ll learn something interesting about murder ballads and songcraft along the way.

“Guns are the Tongues” opens with a sonic drone and a martial beat of the drums. Then Thompson begins singing the story. The verse structure is A-A-A-A-B-C-A-B-C-A-B-C-C. The melody of the A verses is not elaborate–just enough to support the storytelling, which is their job. Tension builds through the first four verses of plot until the song releases, both lyrically and musically, into a kind of romantic and sensual oasis (B). Following this release, our protagonist, Carrie, exhorts the hapless Little Joe to fight for the cause and avenge her family (C). The B verses change in wording, but together with the C verses comprise the song’s chorus. At the end of the song, Thompson launches into a soaring guitar solo, and Carrie’s words and Thompson’s guitar have convinced you, too–of something; you’re not sure just what.

Don’t take my word for it, though.

Guns Are The Tongues from Richard Thompson on Myspace.

Listen to the album version on YouTube here.

Lyrics

Some people have assumed that the song depicts an Irish Republican Army (IRA) cell, but Thompson’s not concerned with real geography or real politics here. The only place name used is Glengarry, which you’d be hard pressed to find in Ireland. This level of abstraction from any particular place or time is important for a number of reasons, particularly within the context of an album that explores the warrior theme during war time. We’ll listen to another piece later this week that will give some helpful contrast.

Thompson answers the IRA question specifically in one of his online Q&A sessions:

“Q: ‘Guns Are the Tongues’ is as fine a song as any you’ve written (no mean feat, as you know much better than I). I’ve yet to encounter a less dogmatic, less simplistic portrait of the tragic seductiveness of terrorism. Though I’m normally loath to ask an artist to explain his work, I was curious whether the song is based on an IRA incident or whether the Carrie and Little Joe characters are entirely your own creation. Either way, thanks for opening a door that we normally don’t get to see past. 
–Jim Scheiner

Richard Thompson, album art from Sweet Warrior Photo by Ron Sleznak

A [RT]: This song is fiction, and not based on any real characters. Put it in Ireland if you like, but I left the setting a little vague. The politics is supposed to be more of a backdrop to the human drama.”

“This was a tough song to arrange. To properly set the scene, it requires 4 verses before releasing into a chorus. This is hard on the listener, so we had to build slowly, adding various elements a little at a time. Thematically, it is set in a world of political turmoil, but is not a political song. It’s a song about human relations, and what people do to each other and expect from each other.”

“We played ‘Guns’ on the band tour supporting the Sweet Warrior album. I’ve done it solo occasionally, but it’s a tough proposition without other musicians adding colour and dynamics, because of its strange structure. It starts with a lot of verses back to back, before the first chorus, and because of the way the story unfolds, it really isn’t possible to change that. I wrote it lyrics first, which probably helps to explain the way it ended up.”

Richard Thompson and Sara Watkins (photo credit: Laura Harmondale)

The band makes the song a success. Thompson doesn’t always tour with a band, let alone the band as he assembled it for recording this song–which benefits from the accents of Nickel Creek‘s Sara Watkins on violin, among others.

The musical arrangement reinforces the themes of the lyrics and the “logic” of seduction. By the time we’re through that fourth verse, the musical tension makes us ready to wooed by the romance and rich, sensory beauty of the B verses–roses on pillows, laurel in hair, etc.. We’re then putty in the hands of the mantras of vengeance in the C verses–all of which, significantly, appeal to family ties (“my brother,” “my father,” “my mother”)–buttressed by the insistent, single-note pleading of Watkins’s fiddle repeating rhythmically under Thompson’s voice.

By the end of the song, I find myself singing along with the chorus’s cry for vengeance, dancing around the room, and playing air guitar riffs in a manner too undignified to invite you to imagine. Thompson completely hooks me with this song–not so much through the narrative verses, but through the effects of the choruses, and the raw persuasive power of his guitar. Chills. Every time.

“The only sound that will reach their ears”

This experience of the song helped me figure out why I connected with it more than with “Sidney Wells.” The capacity for empathy is so much stronger in this tale of personal relationship than in the tale of a psychopathic serial killer. Seduction and killing are present in both. You could make a case to call Carrie a serial killer right along side Sidney.

Carrie’s femme fatale aspect–that we have grounds to suspect that Little Joe is not the first or last “comrade in arms” (pun intended) to have been seduced to a premature and violent end–is potentially trickier territory. Does Carrie present a simplistic stereotype or a compelling archetype, and what difference does it make to the story if she’s one or the other, or neither? Or, as Pat asked when I raised this issue with him, is Carrie merely “a symbol for something more universally seductive about violence?”

photo credit: Cass Bird

Thompson’s oeuvre is pretty equal opportunity when it comes to strong, deftly-depicted characters of dubious moral quality. Put fully in context, “Guns are the Tongues” is but one piece in a broader puzzle-solving of the dark, yet still beautiful picture of the human heart that Thompson gives us in his songwriting. Carrie is no more a stereotype than Sidney Wells, or James Adie in “1952 Vincent Black Lightning,” or the various protagonists in “Cooksferry Queen,” “The Sights and Sounds of London Town,” or “I Feel So Good,” among many others. She is a character, through and through.

Returning to the question of empathy, “Sidney Wells” depicts a monster from whom we want distance. We don’t empathize with him. We pity his victims but don’t pity him.  “Guns are the Tongues,” on the other hand, focuses on the poor decisions or extreme actions made through Little Joe’s longing for sex, love, or human connection. Now, I can’t resonate with that, of course, but perhaps some of you can……

Perhaps you empathize with Carrie.

Beyond the empathy issue, though, there’s simply more room to plug in emotionally to the music of “Guns are the Tongues,” because it’s not composed solely of narrative verses. If it were, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as effective. The energy and passion of the music and lyrics of the chorus leaves me jumbled up about just where that enthusiasm is heading. Am I somehow on Carrie’s side at the end or am I just basking in the catharsis achieved by the music after Little Joe’s tragic death? Most likely the latter.

“Guns are the Tongues” brings us to a point similar to that achieved by Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks.” (There’s a sentence I never expected to write!) We dance our way to deeper reflection. The music grabs us and holds us–seduces us–and we can’t easily put the song away as a result. It also leaves things rather helpfully untied–giving us art, not politics, and no question fully answered. In that concluding guitar solo, though, we know we’ve been transported someplace by Little Joe’s tragedy, and we need to figure out what to do once we’re there.

photo credit: Rick Diamond

Next up

In a post later this week, I hope to take a look at the boundaries of the personal and the political by contrasting “Guns are the Tongues” with a couple songs about radicalization and war from Thompson’s work of the last dozen years. I’ll see you then. Thanks for reading.