One of the reasons I loved the movie Hi Fidelity so much was that, at one point in my life, it was about basically me. At one point, single and in my early twenties, I had a notebook crammed with lists of the Top Five Songs, or Albums, for any given situation.Most are long-forgotten. Some come back enough to keep themselves imprinted in your brain.

Such is Shoot Out The Lights, the 1982 album that Richard and Linda Thompson wrote and recorded as their ten-year marriage was skittering into oblivion.

If love has eaten your brain, left trash around your head, and scattered for parts unknown taking all your beer and keying your car, there’s no better album to marinade your brain in.

Shoot Out The Lights is the single best breakup album ever. At times, it’s hard to listen to; if you’ve been through a breakup or two, especially a divorce, parts of the album scrape the edge of your jugular.

Richard rages against the gathering dark in “Don’t Renege On Our Love”

Well hunger is hunger and need is need/Am I just another mouth to feed/When the game is up,/well don’t renege on our love/ No, don’t renege on our love…

…When my heart breaks it breaks like the weather/If you leave me now it’ll thunder forever/ Oh, don’t give it up. /Well, well, don’t renege on our love

The song – a manic shuffle driven by Dave Mattacks’ stuttering drums and Thompson’s burbling Strat, sounds upbeat on the surface – like a subway train clicking down the tracks – but the tension is underneath, like the first echoes of worry as the signs of decay become more ominous.

Of course, it takes two to not tango. Linda is next with “Walking On A Wire”. The languid lament – with Linda Thompson’s lovely, piercing voice framed by Richard’s chiming guitar – is the flip side of that worry.

Too many steps to take/Too many spells to break/Too many nights awake/And no one else. /This grindstone’s wearing me Your claws are tearing me/Don’t use me endlessly It’s too long, too long to myself…

Where’s the justice and where’s the sense?/When all the pain is on my side of the fence I’m walking on a wire,/I’m walking on a wire And I’m falling…

The song feels like that weary, late-night moment when the full gravity of the situation – how far you’ve fallen from where you were, and how far past “daunting” into “impossible” – you’ve gotten.

I hear “Walking On A Wire” and the next song, “A Man In Need”, almost like a couple sitting in two different bars, on nights out with their own friends (and not each other).  “Wire” is at closing time at a quiet wine bar, alone, waiting for the girlfriends to get out of the bathroom, putting on her coat, getting ready to head home to face another night of things falling apart.

In the meantime, Richard’s at another bar in “A Man In Need”, a place with a rockin’ band, pool in the corner, smoke in the air.  And the noise, the smoke and the bustle – played in the song by the jaunty beat, Thompson’s crinkly guitar and the Linda and Clive Gregson’s rough, drunken-sounding backing vocals) are only window-dressing, counterpoint to the anger boiling up underneath:

Well who’s going to shoe your feet?/Ah who’s going to pay your rent?/And who’s going to stand by you?/Well, well, well, well Who’s going to cure the heart of a man in need?

What do you mean, you “love me, but you’re not ‘in love’ with me?”  I hear the song, and I can feel the guy running the empty beer bottle through his fingers, turning it upside down, sizing up the arc to someone’s head…

You have to sleep eventually.  I hear “It’s Just The Motion” almost like a lullaby (the Thompsons had a six-year-old at the time), one that Linda coos at night to put herself to sleep:

Blown by a hundred winds, knocked down a hundred times/rescued and carried along. /Beaten and half-dead and gone/And it’s only the pain that’s keeping you sane And gives you a mind to travel on…

 Oh the motion won’t leave you, won’t let you remain, don’t worry/ It’s a restless wind and a sleepless rain, don’t worry/ ‘Cause under the ocean at the bottom of the sea/ You can’t hear the storm, it’s as peaceful as can be…

 It’s just the motion, it’s just the motion 

It’s just the motion. And MS is just a disease.  In neither case can you ever really go back. 

But at least you can sleep.  Maybe. 

“Shoot Out The Lights” is the flip side of “Just The Motion” – the night where you can’t sleep, where all that was wrong with the two of you segues into all that’s wrong with you.  Late at night.  Nobody to talk to.  Nobody to turn to.  Nothing but the doubts, the regrets, and the gathering, absorbing ugliness of you’re living.

Over an ominous, thudding beat driven by Thompson’s guitar played in a fractured, snarling swirl – like The Byrds on prozac – Richard sounds both mournful and afraid:

In the dark, who can see his face?
In the dark, who can reach him?
He hides like a child. He hides like a child.
Keeps his finger on the trigger
You know he can’t stand the day
Shoot out the lights. Shoot out the lights

Keep the blind down on the window
Ah, keep the pain on the inside
Just watching the dark. Just watching the dark
Ah he might laugh but you won’t see him
As he thunders through the night
Shoot out the lights. Shoot out the lights

 Thompson plays a solo here – disjointed, manic – that is one of the most brilliant of a career jammed with brilliant guitar.

In the darkness the shadows move
In the darkness the game is real
Real as a gun. Real as a gun
As he watches the lights of the city
And he moves through the night
Shoot out the lights. Shoot out the lights
Shoot out the lights. Ah, shoot out the lights

There’s never been a better song anywhere for describing that feeling, sitting there cold and alone and curled up with your worst side. 

And finally, there’s “Wall of Death”.  It’s about a rollercoaster, literally.

I hate rollercoasters. 

But I love looking at them.  Standing at the base of the “Wild Thing”, marveling at the engineering that goes into something like that.  And beyond that; I like looking up and wondering “could I do this again?  Because going on rollercoasters makes me chunder like I do when JB Doubtless tries to do social criticism”. 

Sort of like contemplating the whole “being with someone” thing after you’ve spent all the time getting over someone.  You look up at the idea.  You remember puking your guts out after the last rollercoaster ride.  And yet…

Let me ride on the Wall Of Death one more time
Let me ride on the Wall Of Death one more time
You can waste your time on the other rides
This is the nearest to being alive
Oh let me take my chances on the Wall Of Death

You can go with the crazy people in the Crooked House
You can fly away on the Rocket or spin in the Mouse
The Tunnel Of Love might amuse you
Noah’s Ark might confuse you
But let me take my chances on the Wall Of Death

The song – jangly, Byrds-like, with Richard and Linda singing in the tight, major-key harmony that they avoid for most of the album, is about that same kind of hope.  Getting on the rollercoaster.  Maybe not throwing up.

One of my ten favorite albums of all time.