★★★★★
Though he regularly heads out on one-man tours (including the UK this summer), it's perhaps surprising to discover that it's been three decades since Thompson last released an album with just solo guitar accompaniment. But where 1984's Small Town Romance was a live set originally recorded for radio broadcast in New York, Acoustic Classics revisits fan favourites in the clinical confines of the studio.
- recordcollectormag.com
2014-07-17
★★★★★
In which the English folk eminence reprises his formidable back catalogue armed only with an acoustic guitar. It looks like a holding operation - most of these pieces are best heard in original form, and I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight without Linda still doesn't seem right. Yet Thompson brings the experience of his years to bear on 14 dazzlingly good songs, singing more intensely while playing more nimbly...
- www.theguardian.com
2014-07-13
★★★★★
Thompson's early years with Fairport Convention are somewhat under-represented with only five songs, but not so his six mid-'70s/'80s albums with ex-wife Linda Thompson, which account for nearly a full CD's worth of arguably his finest material. It's here that Thompson's gruff yet expressive voice finds a near perfect foil in Linda's sympathetic husky trill, a union that exploded, and unraveled, with the tension evident in the couple's white-knuckled personal and professional swansong Shoot Out...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2013-04-25
★★★★★
While recording an album's worth of new songs live in the studio with minimal overdubs is challenging enough, veteran songwriter and Strat strangler Richard Thompson's latest CD, Dream Attic, forgoes the recording-studio safety net altogether: he recorded 13 new songs not only live, but in front of a live audience. For most, this would amount to career suicide, but Thompson's songs have always taken on a greater dynamism on stage...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2013-04-25
★★★★★
Just because singer/songwriter and extraordinary guitarist Richard Thompson was one of the originators of British folk-rock with his 60?s Fairport Convention outfit, doesn't mean his roots aren't based in American music. To acknowledge that, Thompson was awarded 2012's American Music Association's Lifetime Achievement Award and this new album--his debut studio recording for New West- is produced by Nashville stalwart Buddy Miller...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2013-04-25
★★★★★
Regularly swinging between acoustic and electric guitar albums, Richard Thompson opts for the latter on his newest, a vigorous 11-song collection that keeps the lyrics and melodies straightforward, allowing the complexity and uniqueness of his guitar-playing to burst through. Also unfussy are the production and arrangements, so when Siobhan Maher Kennedy lends lilting harmony vocals to Thompson's burlier lead ones on five of the tracks, it's hugely effective...
- nowtoronto.com
2013-04-02
★★★★★
Since it began in 1994, Glasgow's Celtic Connections has grown into one of the UK's most celebrated festivals of traditional, folk and roots music, the latest blow-out attracting in excess of 300 acts. Thompson's participation is always a major coup, though this show from last year arguably found him deviating from the core intentions of the event...
- recordcollectormag.com
2013-04-02
★★★★★
After the full-on, amped-up assault of 2010's Dream Attic, Thompson has reined in his six-stringed excesses for an album which, despite its title, is noticeably less electric than its predecessor. Recorded at producer Buddy Miller's Nashville home (drums in the lounge, guitars in the kitchen), Electric's easy manner and open spaces help make the album Thompson's most rewarding release since 1999's Mock Tudor...
- recordcollectormag.com
2013-04-01
★★★★★
Richard ThompsonElectric (New West) The three-syllable title doesn't fully explain Richard Thompson's Electric. In fact, two of his 14th solo outing's high points are acoustic ballads: "The Snow Goose," a cloud-filled duet with Alison Krauss, and "Saving the Good Stuff for You," as sentimental a love song as he's ever penned. Not that there's any paucity of Thompson's gnarled, electric explorations...
- www.austinchronicle.com
2013-03-13
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