Halloween with Richard Thompson in Albany

The set list, October 30, 2010:

The Money Shuffle
Among the Gorse, Among the Grey
Her Comes Geordie
Demons in Her Dancing Shoes
Crimescene
Big Sun Falling in the River
Stumble On
Sidney Wells
A Brother Slips Away
Bad Again
If Love Whispers Your Name

INTERMISSION
Time Will Show the Wiser
You Can’t Win
One Door Opens
Al Bowlly’s in Heaven
I’ll Never Give It Up
Wall of Death
Tear Stained Letter
ENCORES
Take Care the Road You Choose
Man in Need

For Saturday’s concert at the Egg, Thompson and band played two sets. The first presented the new album in order, in its entirety, sans one song. With a 40-plus-year catalog behind him, Thompson’s songwriting is by now a compellingly recognizable variety of styles: If the songs are new, the terrain is familiar, which allows for easy entry for an audience, most of whom probably didn’t have the new release yet. The set, which is also to say the album, moved smartly from the world outside to the inner realm. The opening “Money Shuffle” takes Wall Street to task with deliciously Thompsonian narrative details (“I love kittens and little babies/Can’t you see that’s the guy I am/Your money is safe with me”). By the final three numbers, he was confronting loss and regret (“Another Brother Slips Away,” “Bad Again, “If Love Whispers Your Name”).
Longtime bandmate Pete Zorn shone on his arsenal of instruments (saxophones, flute, acoustic guitar, mandolin) while drummer Michael Jerome continues to be Thompson’s not-so-secret weapon, bringing jazzy wallop to jigs and atmospheric swells to ballads. They were capable of extended instrumental workouts as well as sprightly pop (“Big Sun Falling in the River”).
The second, shorter set was a tour through Thompson’s songbook. They opened with the rarely performed “Time Will Show the Wiser,” the lead track on Fairport Convention’s 1967 debut album, penned when Thompson was 17. “You Can’t Win” (from 1988’s Amnesia) showed the violin-bolstered band to be the prog-rock-meets- English-trad equal of Full House-era Fairport, while “Al Bowlly’s in Heaven” offered a supple and subtle jazzy arrangement that was never a part of the Fairport canon. The concert was a high peak in the formidable Thompson Mountains.