Calvary Cross

Richard Thompson plays one of the longest and strangest electric guitar parts in British folk rock over the back half of “Calvary Cross” — six and a half minutes that move from a sparse, frightened ballad into a kind of slow, broken fire. Linda Thompson sings the early verses as if she already knows how the song ends.

The Thompsons were married when they recorded this, and already the marriage is audibly complicated. Eight years later they would make Shoot Out the Lights together and then split. The grief here is anticipatory — the sound of two people feeling the thing they will eventually have to name. Listen to it when you are grieving someone you haven’t lost yet but already know you will.