Richard Thompson, Last of the Old Guitar Gods

This was a killer year for Vancouver fans of Richard Thompson. Besides releasing one of his most exciting solo records in a long time, the 64-year-old British guitar god came through town twice in 2013.

In November, Thompson could be seen on stage at the Orpheum in his opening slot for Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell. Thompson is still on the other side of obscure for most people, but he might have stolen the show with a one-man acoustic performance that included a rare and precious reading of the Fairport Convention masterpiece, "Who Knows Where the Time Goes."

Thompson was a boy, barely out of his teens when Fairport first recorded that song in 1969. His career since then, either solo or with his former wife Linda, has yielded an unreasonable number of classics. Recorded in the midst of a break-up, their thrillingly dark, queasily honest 1982 album Shoot Out the Lights reliably turns up on those Greatest Ever... lists we all like to pour over.

It's a little ironic that Shoot Out the Lights would include the song "Wall of Death." A hit-friendly mix of chiming guitar and upbeat chorus, it's the kind of thing that Thompson, whose genius on guitar is matched in every way by his strength as a songwriter, seems to drop every once in a while just to let some light in.

On this year's Electric album, Thompson and his most recent cohorts (Taras Prodaniuk on bass and Michael Jerome on drums) give us "Good Things Happen to Bad People." Like "Wall of Death" -- or the Cajun-inflected "Tear-Stained Letter" from the early '80s, or "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight," from Thompson's 1974 album of the same name -- it's a monstrous earworm of a track with a seethingly dark undertow.

Let's call it the song of the year (even if it lost out in the Americana Music Association awards). When Thompson and his Electric Trio rolled out "Good Things Happen to Bad People" at their Rio Theatre show last May, they gave us the cherry on the top of 2013's best show. Meanwhile, when they re-emerged for the encore with a lysergic gallop through "Hey Joe," Thompson demonstrated how casually he can school Hendrix, even when he's basically just goofing around.