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Music > Albums > Richard Thompson - Front Parlour Ballads (2005) Retail CD
added on February 3, 2007, at 01:25 by allcdcovers

Front Parlour Ballads is almost entirely acoustic, with all instruments but percussion played by Thompson. Despite the basic approach, however, this is not a sparse album.* Thompson's guitar playing is as complex as ever, and the songs stand comparison with any of his best. The opening track, "Let It Blow", is a funny account of a relationship conducted in the grubby glare of the tabloids, "For Whose Sake?" and "Miss Patsy" are sterling illustrations of Thompson's ability to frame modern sentiments and stories within time-served folk idioms. "Boys Of Mutton Street" starts with a riff which is * surely intentionally * an echo of Thompson¹s previously best-known acoustic song, "1952 Vincent Black Lightning", and "Solitary Life"{ sounds like it might be Thompson's take on Radiohead's "Fitter Happier". There has been bizarrely little recognition of the possibility, but after the resounding classics Mock Tudor and The Old Kit Bag, Front Parlour Ballads suggests that Thompson may well be in the prime of his long and extraordinary career. --Andrew Mueller

Back 2381 x 1839 px

CD 1900 x 1912 px

Front 1890 x 1839 px