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Album
Lindgren, Richard
Memento - Best of + rare and unreleased tracks 1994-2010
(Rootsy.nu)

Price: 0 SEK

A 3CD box set. 46 songs, 22 previously unreleased. Booklet with Richards Lindgrens own recollections of the songs and recordings. Liner notes by Mary Gauthier.

They say there is no one more honest than a dying man, and Richard Lindgren sings and writes like a dying man. He creates music like someone who has nothing to lose. His songs are honest, raw, real. It’s like he is talking to me in confidence, singing personally to me his hearts’ secrets.

I remember the first time I heard the music of Richard Lindgren. His songs grabbed me immediately, making it impossible for me to turn his music off. I simply HAD to hear the next song, then the next one. I forgot about what I was supposed to be doing next. I just sat there listening, and a smile broke across my face because against the odds, I’d found a new artist to love.

As song after song went by and held my attention, I felt my heart open, time went away, and Richard Lindgren sang me back to my love of the art, the craft, and the magic of the troubadour-back to that jaw dropping place where the mystery of the creator is embedded in the creation of a human being. As I listened to Richard sing I remembered, once more, the power of song.

I’ve always felt there is an unspoken contract between the writer and the listener, an agreement. It goes like this—as a listener, when I give music my attention, I expect the songwriter to give me something back in return, something as valuable to me as my time, something I can believe in and love. I want the songwriter to have done the time-consuming and brutal work of finding the truth inside them before singing their songs to me. What I require before I can let a new artist in is trustworthiness. The inversion is true as well, as a songwriter and a singer, I honor the trust an audience puts in me, and as Dylan once said, I must know my song well before I start singing.

From my first listen, I believed the songs of Richard Lindgren. I believed he was telling me the truth, that he was a trustworthy singer and writer. That he does it in ENGLISH, when his native tongue is Swedish, is astonishing to me. This is no small feat.

When Richard sings,“ Baby I don’t belong in this world anymore”, I feel it too. He is speaking my own life to me.

“I’m sorry baby, if you wasted love on me”, ahh, yes Richard, I know that one as well.

“I was born with my heart in a vice in the ripe of spring”. Amen brother, me too.

Richard Lindgren’s songs introduce me to pieces of myself that I didn’t have words for until he sang them. This is the best a songwriter can hope to give a listener, the most a songwriter can offer. It is a gift that helps us, the listeners, to remain conscious in this terrifying, heartbreaking, and breathtakingly beautiful world. Richard is a true artist, and I am a true fan. Listen to these songs with an open heart; they will not let you down.

Mary Gauthier, Jan. 2011

CD 1:
1. One Step Behind		Listen
2. Five Pints and a Wink from Gwendolyn
3. When My Days Are Done
4. Blue Sky Shut
5. Poets Drown in Lakes
6. Passenger
7. Blind Willie McTell
8. Mescal Mae
9. I Don’t Belong In This World Anymore
10. Black Morning, Black Train
11. Aberdeen
12. Lone Star Blues
13. White Freightliner Blues
14. Take Tomorrow
15. Back To Brno
16. Doubt
CD 2:
1. Drunk On Arrival
2. Portion Of Love
3. Dead Man
4. Hello Mystery World
5. Grand Hotel
6. Goodbye Rosie
7. I Won’t Recall You At All
8. My Kind Of Place
9. Brother Flower
10. I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry
11. Lighthouse In The Dark
12. Famous Blue Raincoat
13. I Can’t Deliver That
14. Sweet Buttercup
15. Drinking Down Sorrow
CD 3:
1. From Camden Town to Bleecker Street
2. Goner
3. Bad News
4. Silver
5. You Know Who Your Lover Will Be
6. If Only She Came Walking By
7. David Reynolds´ Last Ride
8. Tom Traubert’s Blues
9. Mixed-Up World
10. Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)
11. A Man You Can Hate
12. If My Name’s Ever On the Tip of Her Tongue
13. Song of Calamity
14. Untitled II
15. How Long?

Other albums by Lindgren, Richard:
A Hobo's Selection
A Man You Can Hate
Death & Love
Death & Love print
Down On My Luck
Driftwood (The 309 Sessions)
Dunce's Cap
Grace
It Makes No Difference
Malmostoso
Memento - Condensed: the rare and unreleased tracks 1994-2010
Poets Drown In Lakes - A Live Recording
Postcards From Elsewhere
Salvation Hardcore
Sundown On A Lemon Tree
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
Turnstile