Teddy Thompson & Kelly Jones – Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, 12/05/16

The son of fêted English folk-rock trailblazers Richard & Linda Thompson he may well be, but Teddy Thompson is very much a celebrated artist in his own right.  A clutch of critically acclaimed, though commercially neglected solo albums are firm testament to this fact.  And this Kelly Jones – no, not that Stereophonics one – is a fellow singer-songwriter who has also carved out for herself a most respectable career in music over the past few years.

Thompson and Jones share a deep love of vintage country music and first sang together at Los Angeles’ Club Largo in 2011 when they harmonised on an old George Jones’ standard.  They subsequently started writing songs together and last month saw the release of their first collaborative album, Little Windows. The record comprises 10 songs that belong in another age; charming, timeless country-pop tunes born of the ’50s and ’60s and inspired by the likes of Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers.

It comes as no surprise that Little Windows provides the backbone of Teddy Thompson and Kelly Jones’ setlist tonight but even before the pair take to the Howard Assembly Room stage we get the chance to hear Thompson duet with the support artist Sunny Ozell on a rather wonderful interpretation of the old Hank Williams’ classic ‘I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still In Love with You)’.  Thompson then returns alone after the interval and plays first ‘I Feel’ and then ‘Delilah’ from his 2011 release Bella.  There is a strange awkwardness about Thompson as a performer.  He stares resolutely into the middle distance, somehow lost in his music and seemingly detached from the environment in which he finds himself.  It is something that his then being joined for Leonard Cohen’s ‘Tonight Will Be Fine’ by the four musicians who had earlier backed Ozell does little to change.

Yet for any discomfort or remoteness that may be felt, the music Thompson delivers is never anything less than compelling, something to which both ‘I Should Get Up’ and ‘Separate Ways’ clearly attest.  By this time, the band has found a comfortable groove and the show moves into another dimension when Kelly Jones makes her first appearance of the night. ‘Only Fooling’ – the first song this evening to be taken from Little Windows – is sublime and illustrates just how well her and Thompson’s voices complement each other.

Thompson and Jones’ music takes us all back to an earlier, more simple, far more innocent time.  Yet for all that, the emotions about which they sing – the complexities of human relationships and the desolation that is felt when they fail – remain ageless; the concluding ‘I Thought That We Said Goodbye’ is a perfect distillation of this feeling.

Thompson and Jones’ collaborative craft is that of strong, unadorned songwriting. And tonight these beautifully arranged songs are played with unquestionable precision.  But what fails to elevate this show from the very good into the truly exceptional is the apparent disconnect between them as individuals.  For the period that they are both on stage – a slightly uncomfortable embrace before and after the two encores aside – they are stood never less than five feet apart.  And whilst one may not expect to find the crackling sexual heat that Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge generated on the Old Grey Whistle Test back in 1972 when they sung ‘Help Me Make It Through The Night’, or even the powerful synergy produced by Johnny Cash and June Carter-Cash, the most successful male-female pairings of this, or any other genre for that matter, do require a greater degree of emotional tension to be created on stage between the two principals.

Photo credit: Simon Godley

More photos from this show can be found HERE