In a single potent stroke, 1975’s Pour Down Like Silver distills all of the romance, comedy, terror, devotion, and lust which, taken together, comprise Thompson’s brilliantly singular genius. From the fretfully exuberant opener “Streets Of Paradise” (“Tears fall down like whiskey/ Tears fall down like wine/ On an island made of cocaine/ On a sea of turpentine”) to the astounding eight-minute side one closer “Night Comes In,” it is apparent that we are in rarified, roiling emotional terrain. All of that is mere pretext to the flip side, roughly 21 minutes of near-total transcendence resembling nothing so much as side three of Exile On Mainstreet in all of its beautiful, terrible reckoning. Even amidst the ostensible optimisms of “Jet Plane In A Rocking Chair,” the tugging undertow of fractious human interaction holds true. On the almost unimaginably harsh and beautiful ballad “Beat The Retreat,” Thompson lays bare a loneliness so visceral it feels frighteningly innate to the human experience. “Dimming Of The Day/Dargai” is probably Thompson’s greatest song, and one of the great album closers in all of the popular music tradition — a near-perfect meditation on love, nature and religious salvation that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with behemoths like Ray Davies’ “Waterloo Sunset” and Bob Dylan’s “Blind Willie McTell” in the tower of song. Thompson has continued to render great music for decades after Pour Down Like Silver, but he has never yet surpassed this colossal achievement.