Richard Thompson - Ship To Shore

Ship To Shore is the nineteenth solo studio album by British singer songwriter Richard Thompson, released in May 2024 via New West Records.

Having co-founded the groundbreaking group Fairport Convention as a teenager in the 1960s, Richard Thompson and his mates virtually invented British Folk Rock. By the age of 21 he left Fairport to pursue his own career, followed by a decade long musical partnership with his then-wife Linda Thompson, to over 30 years as a highly successful solo artist. Thompson’s massive body of work which includes over 40 albums, has been recorded by the likes of Robert Plant, Elvis Costello, REM.

When Richard Thompson began writing songs for his latest album, Ship To Shore, the artist was instinctively drawn to his own musical roots, employing them in the service of fashioning a deep and diverse 12-track collection that pulls from various styles, genres and eras, but remains unmistakably Richard Thompson.

There’s the rumbling, Motown-style rhythm that propels “Trust,” and the straightforward riff-rock of “Turnstile Casanova.” The drone-y “The Old Pack Mule,” an “old man’s song” that takes musical cues from 1600s-era European music, and “Life’s a Bloody Show,” an ode to “snake-oil salesmen and hucksters” that floats on a glammy, cabaret-like melody that’s “almost like a parody of a Noël Coward song, or something from Berlin in the 1920s,” Thompson says.

“I liked the idea of having a strong base to work from and reaching out from there,” he says. “And I think of my base as being British traditional music, but there’s also Scottish music, there’s Irish music. There’s jazz and country and classical. As far as I’m concerned, once you establish your base you can reach out anywhere. It’ll still be you ringing through, wherever you decide to go musically.”

This double album 2LP record set is an indie stores exclusive limited edition of 2000 copies on yellow, orange and white marbled coloured vinyl with an etching on Side D, housed in a gatefold sleeve with an autographed 5 x 7 archival print, pressed in the US via New West Records.