Richard & Linda Thompson: Shoot Out The Lights (Hannibal)

TO RICHARD and Linda Thompson there's a movement to life — and you could call it "falling." The Thompsons' first U.S. album in four years is a hymn to the motion of desperation, betrayal and death — so they hardly come across as your classic fun couple. But if you think their morbidity is dark enough to make Neil Young look like a dancing Pepper by comparison, you're at least part wrong. To the Thompsons, "falling" isn't all downhill. It's more like a brutally ironic mixture of vertigo and the Nestea Plunge. After all, these are the voices of people who've developed a safety net philosophy and passion over the years which in the end (after much wringing of the hands and beating of the chest) gives all their kvetching some positive meaning.