Is Richard Thompson Britain’s Bob Dylan?

There are artists you go to see expecting to be challenged, surprised, even let down. And there are artists you can rely on to deliver more or less the same experience every time. Each approach has its merits. Richard Thompson is a ‘death and taxes’ kind of guy. The fact that his excellence feels inevitable can make it seem less excellent somehow, which doesn’t entirely seem fair.

A founding member of folk-rock pioneers Fairport Convention, Thompson has been described as the British Bob Dylan. This makes sense in some ways. Both men mine the centuries-deep tradition of their respective countries to create music that feels ancient and new; both carry a certain amount of generational clout, though Thompson’s cachet is certainly more cult-level than Dylan’s; and both know how to craft a couplet which shades into poetry.

In other ways the comparison makes no sense at all.