A country music narrative can be boiled down to two possible scenarios:

Scenario A) My woman’s left me … and I’m feelin’ so lonesome.

Scenario B) My woman’s left me … and I don’t give a damn!

Teddy Thompson has got women on his mind on latest album Bella and he’s feeling blue about it. From the eye-raising lyrics of ‘Looking For A Girl’, which some reviewers actually took seriously, right the way through to album closer, ‘Gotta Have Someone’, Thompson puts his heart on the line in search of the perfect gal, and suffers a lot for his troubles. The course of true love is never a smooth one, so pain is eased with some good tunes and classic crooning, probably owing more to 60s troubadour Roy Orbison than anything his famous parents Richard and Linda Thompson ever did. In fact, being born into British folk royalty may have been a mixed blessing for Thompson whose career has already seen a number of fits and starts in its ten or so years. Originally playing alongside his parents, with a major influence on albums like Linda Thompson’s 2002 album Fashionably Late and touring and recording with his father in the late 90s during the period of albums like Mock Tudor, his solo career started promisingly with 2000′s self-titled debut and the intense songs of love on Separate Ways in 2006. But something then came unstuck until his musical direction took an unexpected turn in 2007 with an album of country music covers, Up Front And Low Down. Another side of Teddy’s music bloomed and there’s more than a hint of it here on Bella.

What Thompson does share with his father is an apparent self-loathing and corrosiveness in his lyrics, and it’s often this which sets the music apart from some of his sugar-coated contemporaries. Pop sensibility yes, but there’s a much darker side here, too. Note the song ‘Over And Over’, for example, where he admits:

“Some time ago I came up with a plan

shit on myself so that noone else can

I have perfected this stance

you better keep your distance”

Many of the bittersweet songs on Bella seem to be tempered with this fear and loathing, but fortunately there’s also a pop vehicle to work through some of the self-doubt, with a fine set of songs and musical backing from his current touring band and guests (including Dave Schramm of The Schramms and inevitably Richard Thompson himself). Credit for the overall sound must go to producer David Kahne who has added a bit of spit and polish and come up with a warmer sound than 2008′s A Piece Of What You Need, basically a pop album, and really brought Teddy’s vocals to the fore this time. A song like ‘Home’ could sound trite and over-sentimentalized in the wrong hands, but the singer’s sensitive delivery makes its simplicity sound genuine: home is the place you go back to, to feel the suffocating love and warmth until you can’t wait to get away again, ready for the next adventure life throws at you (“Home is where you go when you need to know wherever you roam you can always go home …”). What marks the song for me is the end of the track when the singer draws out the word ‘home’, and the producer holds the music back just enough to let the timbre of the note really sink in. Bella is a bit like that, forget the misery of the lyrics, rather cloak yourself in the warmth of Thompson’s wonderful vocal. Songs like ‘Delilah’, ‘Gotta Have Someone’ and ‘Over And Over’ also show off Thompson’s crooning style to great effect, and benefit from the strings which have become a Kahne trademark (in recent recordings with Tony Bennett, Regina Spektor and Paul McCartney).

Some might be disappointed in the poplite direction Thompson has taken, but on Bella the music delivers the songs as a package which is clearly marked ‘PURSUIT OF LOVE – HANDLE WITH CARE’! ‘I Feel’ chronicles a man’s changing feelings towards his lover, ‘Take Me Back Again’ pleads for forgiveness after “messing up again”, the duet ‘Tell Me What You Want’ with Jenni Muldaur pleads for better understanding in the sort of fractious relationship Tammy Wynette and George Jones sang about, and ‘The One I Can’t Have’ describes a “love disease” of infatuation, ah yes that old chestnut … in other words, on Bella, Thompson runs the whole gamut of emotions of heartache and pain. It’s hard to tell if he’s looking for sympathy, the words might be better kept in a personalized diary, and ‘Looking For A Girl’ is sure to raise the shackles of (unreconstructed!) feminists everywhere, a laughable shopping list of qualities guys look for in girls … hey, make your own toast Teddy! Throwaway pop possibly, but having a little fun, light relief which Bella could do with more of.

So don’t get hung up on Thompson’s catalogue of love misery, he just wants the girl to know he’s blue so she’ll come back to him in the end (Scenario A), and Bella’s no sellout, rather an attempt to marry … erm, sorry, I mean join together manufactured pop with the sentiment of country music. From ‘Delilah’ with strings attached:

“I got myself out of the way

my debt to you was never paid

I was a fool to let you go

I’m sorry and I love you so

I think about you every day

I’m sorry about the things I said

My perfect love and closest friend

Delilah …”

Just another small step in the life of the young troubadour, wallowing in misery but still coming up smelling of fresh roses, possibly a Gram Parsons or a Hank Williams in the making. The leanings towards country rather than folk give the guy more power to his tragic elbow as he continues to develop as a credible artist in his own right. Now surely the estranged son of folk royalty, although Fairport weren’t exactly strangers to country music were they?