Richard Thompson Plugs In For Sweet Warrior

Guitar god Richard Thompson is back and, for the first time since 2003’s The Old Kit Bag, sporting an electric axe.

Sweet Warrior, slated for a May 29 release by Shout! Factory, is the Londoner’s first album of all-new material in nearly two years and features appearances by frequent collaborators Danny Thompson, Michael Jerome, Judith Owen and Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek.

As a whole, the record plays like a book of short stories, each with its own set of characters, including a mournful widower, a dissolute husband and wife and a young soldier stationed in Baghdad in the unabashedly anti-war “Dad’s Gonna Kill Me.”

For now, the only U.S. date Thompson has scheduled is, oddly enough, an appearance at Bonnaroo in Manchester, Tenn., on June 15.

Sweet Warrior tracklist:

1. Needle And Thread
2. I’ll Never Give It Up
3. Take Care The Road You Choose
4. Mr. Stupid
5. Dad’s Gonna Kill Me
6. Poppy-Red
7. Bad Monkey
8. Francesca
9. Too Late To Come Fishing
10. Sneaky Boy
11. She Sang Angels To Rest
12. Johnny’s Far Away
13. Guns Are The Tongues
14. Sunset Song