Linda Thompson finds her voice with a little help from her friends – plus the week’s best albums
Linda Thompson: Proxy Music ★★★★☆
“Once I had a voice clear and true … but now that voice is gone,” is the arresting opening declaration of The Solitary Traveller, the first thing we hear on a surprising new album by Linda Thompson, the veteran English folkie once hailed by Rolling Stone magazine as “one of rock’n’roll’s finest voices.” The most surprising thing being that Linda Thompon doesn’t sing on it herself.
Thompson rose to acclaim in the 1970s as the wife and duet partner of guitarist Richard Thompson, to whom she was married for 10 years. Their 1974 debut I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight and 1982 break up album Shoot Out the Lights remain revered classics of English folk rock. But Linda’s subsequent solo career was derailed by spasmodic dysphonia, a degenerative health condition which make her voice strangulated and hard to control. For some decades she was able to record if not perform, but in recent years her vocal abilities have withered entirely.
What happens to a singer when they can no longer sing? It is a challenge most vocalists will eventually face, the voice being an instrument prone to change with age and sometimes to fail altogether. Some singers adapt their catalogue to contend with thinner, shakier vocal cords and shifting registers, some (too many, if the truth was known) rely on fakery, autotune effects in the studio and pre-recorded vocals on stage.
The cheekily named Proxy Music takes a creative approach to the problem, by enlisting family and friends to provide vocals – by proxy, as it were. The Solitary Traveller is performed by Linda’s 40-year-old daughter, Kami Thompson of the Rails, whose tone, timbre and flattened folky delivery are spookily like her mother’s. Interestingly, while the song addresses loss, it rejects self-pity. “Lonely life where is thy sting? … I’m solvent and free, boys!” Linda’s lyric asserts.
The album is full of such deft perspective shifts and twists, on sharply written songs composed mostly with her eldest son Teddy (a fine singer-songwriter in his own right). A woman laments her fading looks on I Used to be So Pretty (beautifully sung by the unarguably gorgeous English singer Ren Harvieu) and there’s bite in the lines: “Pretty is as pretty does / And when you have it it’s enough / When it’s gone / You need fortitude, not pity / Oh I wish I was still pretty.” Ex-husband Richard plays guitar, and you can’t help but wonder about the dynamics of that relationship. There’s something mischievous about this whole project, emphasised by a cover photograph that puns on the 1972 debut from Roxy Music, with the elderly Linda gusseted up and grinning fiercely in the pose of the cheesecake cover model.
Leading lights of British folk including Eliza Carthy, The Proclaimers and the Unthanks all lend their voices. Rufus Wainwright delivers a swaggering jazz ballad, Darling This Will Never Do, whilst Martha Wainwright hones in on a piercingly affecting song of a childless mother, Or Nothing At All. Highlight is the great American singer-songwriter John Grant singing an affecting song called John Grant about Linda’s encounter with him. Teddy Thompson takes the lead on Those Damn Roches, a witty ode to families of collaborators who “tug at my heart / Can’t get along except when we’re apart / Is it life or is it art?” As the silent singer concludes, sometimes they are “one and the same.” Neil McCormick
Gracie Abrams, The Secret of Us ★★★★☆
Being hand picked by Taylor Swift to open the Eras tour is an opportunity any young artist would dream of – it has the power to catapult virtually unknown singers into the stratosphere: just look at Sabrina Carpenter, who recently spent five weeks atop the UK chart with Espresso. For Gracie Abrams, however, the 24-year-old Californian singer-songwriter, who Swift has described as one of her “favourite friends”, it was only the tip of the iceberg. Her second studio album, The Secret of Us, features a duet with Swift (on Us) – marking the first time the record-breaking, discourse-dominating artist has ever featured on a fellow female musician’s record.
Unsurprisingly, it’s The National’s Aaron Dessner and super-producer Jack Antonoff working behind-the-scenes; Dessner, who worked with Swift on Folklore and Evermore, having the biggest impact on a track that owes obvious debt to the whispery indie-sound of Bon Iver or Sufjan Stevens. Us establishes Abrams as an artist keen on breaking into assorted musical spheres – indie festivals as well as Swift’s stadiums. Throughout the song, though, you do find yourself yearning for Abrams to go full pelt – to swap the breathy, understated delivery for bigger, more emotional notes and bridges. When Swift’s verse arrives, she effortlessly overshadows everything that came before it, singing: “And if history’s clear then the flames always end up in ashes / And it seemed like fate / Give it 10 months and you’ll be past tense”.
When I interviewed Abrams late last year, she described opening the Eras tour as “an honour that I’ll never wrap my head around”. Unlike her earlier work, which was breathy, slow-paced and centred on whispery vocals that often made you lose attention, The Secret of Us marks her move into a more anthemic sound – one that sounds remarkably Swiftian, ready to be blasted out in larger venues. Much of the critical conversation about Abrams has revolved around her famous parents: her father is Hollywood director JJ Abrams, of Star Wars and Star Trek fame, her mother the Lost and Westworld producer Katie McGrath. It’s a gilded upbringing that has led to the inevitable “nepo baby” label, but the things she sings about – typical concerns of young women, from heartbreak, growing up and online trolls – are universal in their scope.
Like Swift – and other contemporaries such as Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo – Abrams’s lyrics are rooted in the confessional, as she takes on heartbreak, growing pains and online trolls. On Blowing Smoke, she lays into a pretentious ex who replaces her with someone prettier, more mature; Risk is a playful, string-driven tale of young love and taking chances: “God, I’m jumping in the deep end / It’s more fun to swim in / Heard the risk is drownin’, but I’m gonna take it.” The album also features Close to You, a track Abrams teased seven whole years ago but never released – and it’s the clear highlight, all deliciously retro-synths and introspective lyrics that refrain from taking themselves too seriously. Poppie Platt
Lola Young, This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway ★★★★☆
Luring Amy Winehouse’s old manager out of retirement because he thinks you’re too brilliant to pass up is some vote of confidence – and one most young singers would find intimidating. But on her second album, This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway, Lola Young has all of the grit and charisma of a seasoned artist; one who happily accepts the hype (she graduated from the Brit school and was signed to Island Records at just 18) and treats it like a challenge rather than a threat. It looks like Nick Shymansky – who worked with Winehouse for seven years – was right to trust his gut.
For those new to Young’s music, you’d be wise not to expect a similar sound to Winehouse, for it’s markedly rockier and messier. The 23-year-old straight-talking Londoner prefers the kind of spoken-word/singing hybrid made famous by Lily Allen and Kate Nash, but that’s not to say her pipes aren’t powerful: they howl and growl through expressions of angst and rebellion on tracks like Messy, Big Brown Eyes and Conceited, while the album’s slower ballads – You Noticed and Intrusive Thoughts – give them a chance to shine without all of the bells and whistles. “All these intrusive thoughts / Don’t know what’s real or not / They scream inside my head / Wish I could kill the lot,” she sings on the latter, before imploring her inner demons to take a day off. Honest and emotive but most importantly, funny – Young is the kind of popstar Britain should be supporting. Poppie Platt
Best new songs of the week
By Poppie Platt
High Vis, Mob DLA
The best hardcore band in Britain right now offers up a furious, searing takedown of the systems responsible for stripping public services beyond recognition, leaving people poor and miserable, and invites them to do something about it (“Nothing good ever comes to those who wait”). Make sure you catch their set at Glastonbury – they’re incredible live.
Sabrina Carpenter, Good Luck, Babe!
And the internet went wild! Pop’s current favourite number one star (Carpenter) covers pop’s other current favourite star (Chappell Roan) in the Radio 1 Live Lounge, inflicting the glorious pop anthem with a country-twang that brings to mind the gems of Shania Twain’s heyday.
Charli XCX - Girl, so confusing (with Lorde)
An updated version of one of the highlights of Charli’s brilliant new album BRAT – already my album of the year – invites pop’s coolest Kiwi, Lorde, to add her spin on a track about women being pitted against one another in the music industry.
Marie Naffah, Rust & Blue
The London-based alt-pop artist with a voice like treacle and whiskey has written a gorgeous love song to her partner of 10 years, resisting all of the genre’s usual clichés to cherish hyper-specific, intimate moments, from looking at an Edward Hopper painting to buying books together.
