- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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UncutMay just be the most concise and potent distillation of Thompson's art to date. [Album of the Month, Sep 2005, p.98]
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Front Parlor Ballads is built from modest stuff, but the finished product is as strong as anything Thompson has recorded in the past ten years.
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Even when he turns down the volume, he never tones down the creative intensity.
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BillboardWhile lyrically his songs are top-drawer, Thompson's guitar prowess is also noteworthy. [13 Aug 2005]
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Recording at home suits him. Even with the over-dubs, this set has the vitality of a live performance, and he clearly feels relaxed enough to take chances with the sometimes elaborate songs, delivering both the expected guitar skills and some fluid, difficult vocals.
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MojoLess has become more for Richard Thompson. [Sep 2005, p.96]
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Front Parlour Ballads offers the traditional Thompson mix of lush folk beauty and cruel knife-twisting lyrics.
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Song after song, this is hardly an album that boasts of its riches but, in a determinedly low-key fashion, the music asserts itself in honest textures captured in naked performance.
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Rolling StoneA few tracks feel forced... but the majority have the effortless sound of a master who's been at it for four decades. [11 Aug 2005, p.70]
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While this may not be the best place to start investigating the man, it's still another reliably wonderful chapter in the life of one of the country's best songwriters.
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Q MagazineMostly the results are pleasingly wry and wise. [Sep 2005, p.118]
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The surprise here is that Thompson has been able to create such a crackerjack of an album from such sparse and dark materials.
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Bogs down in stillborn ballads, vague metaphors, and fusty arrangements that sound too Olde English, even for him.
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But cliché is not the only thing that mars “Thames” and other tunes... It’s the lethargy of the tempos, the navel-gazing compositional complexity, the empty flashiness of the acoustic-guitar runs and over-enunciated words.
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Perhaps he needs the pressure or the camaraderie. Perhaps not. But for some reason, Thompson sounds detached from the songs on Front Parlour Ballads, even though he's in the thick of them.
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This album is difficult, complicated, pretentious, infuriating, inconsistent, and asks more questions then it answers.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 5 out of 7
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Mixed: 1 out of 7
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Negative: 1 out of 7
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martinbFeb 5, 2006Usual RT mix of wry lyrics, dark ideas and superb playing.
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wxOct 28, 2005
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SordelAug 17, 2005Adventurous but, for this artist, underwhelming