Lay yourself bare, Teddy

Thompson sings songs of scorn and suicide but plays it for laughs. He really doesn't need to ...

Dressed in a shimmery grey suit, his tidy hair just so, singer-songwriter Teddy Thompson doesn't look like a tragi-comic figure. But he is. Literate and candid, Thompson's songs are usually desperately sad. On his latest album, A Piece Of What You Need, however, they are most often delivered with an upbeat swing. Tonight there's even the odd fanfare of synthesised trumpet from his otherwise dextrous keyboard player, Daniel Mintseris. Thompson's entire career is palpably teetering on the brink of stardom, or oblivion. In front of an audience, though, he plays it all for laughs.

  1. Teddy Thompson
  2. Scala,
  3. London
  4. NW1
  1. Starts October 2
  2. Box office:
    020 7833 2022
  3. Scala

'You were supposed to be on Jonathan Ross!' shouts a voice in the crowd. Thompson pauses. 'I was busy,' he deadpans. The reality, it emerges, had something to do with being snowed in. Fiddling with his guitar strings, he looks up again. 'My big break.' A grin. 'Broken.'

Thompson's wry repartee may be partly genetic. The son of British folk-rockers Richard and Linda Thompson, Teddy served an early apprenticeship in his father's band, absorbing his father's public wit nightly.

Having luminaries for parents set a high bar for the singer-songwriter but Richard and Linda are not the only tall trees on Thompson's terrain. He is part of a cabal of second-generation songwriters that includes Rufus and Martha Wainwright. They guest on each other's records; record and perform tributes to Leonard Cohen (Cohen was in their parents' cabal, and his daughter, Lorca, is close to Rufus). But Rufus is finally successful and Thompson isn't yet.

Since the release of his debut album in 2000, Thompson has also been banjaxed by that cruellest of burdens, critical acclaim. As well as exposing music critics as impotent gasbags with no clout, it puts artists in a tortuous position. If I'm so good - they must think - why is nobody buying my stuff?

But Thompson sounds nothing like an underdog. Unlike Rufus Wainwright, whose ornate songs dwell firmly in the realms of art, Thompson has always been a pop-oriented singer with a blatant love of country music. Neil Finn of Crowded House and Chris Isaak are key references. Live, the chance of being goosed by a Thompson key change or bowled over by a sudden rhythmic departure are virtually nil. He plays it straight, confidently straddling the middle of the musical road - albeit with songs about suicide and scorn.

His ease and humour are infectious, however, making the obviousness of the music less of an issue. He cracks jokes about his bankability, his album ('buy a spare!'), his sexuality (he likes to keep people guessing, but probably straight), and the old Motown trick of playing the gig's first song again at the end. So we get newie 'In My Arms' twice, a pleasure rather than a chore. The second time, people are dancing.

The vast part of his band's set is taken up by the rest of A Piece Of What You Need. Thompson's third album of original songs has had near-universal critical acclaim, despite the heinously punchy production of Marcus de Vries (a veteran of Rufus Wainwright's records). It feels like the last roll of the dice for Thompson, the singer-songwriter courting a mainstream audience. With any luck, November's support slot on the James Blunt tour should boost sales. He (inadvertently?) refers to this forthcoming arena run at the end, when thanking the audience. 'You're beautiful,' he twinkles.

Happily, de Vries has been confined to the studio and tonight the new songs slot easily into Thompson's country power-pop idiom. 'One Of These Days' is so jolly it jars but 'Where To Go From Here' packs both subtleties and a bit of ukulele.

By contrast, Thompson's second album, 2005's Separate Ways, was a lustrous gem, full of doleful songs about rancid love. He plays a handful of songs from it on his own tonight, focusing on the festering bitterness of the title track and 'Everybody Move It', a masterwork about the joylessness of parties.

Humour's relationship to misery is a complex one, and Thompson is probably guilty of selling his potent blues short. The most moving song on his latest album is 'Turning The Gun On Myself', a tune about suicide delivered tonight with great skill. But it, too, is played for laughs. Thompson reveals that they had to take the closing gunshot sound off the track because otherwise 'Walmart wouldn't stock the album'. A pause. 'Walmart stock guns!' At the end of this elegant downer, the gunshot is reinstated. Everyone laughs, robbing Thompson of the gravitas he deserves.

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