Music » Traditional British & Celtic Folk Music

Reissue of the late British folk icon's final full-length album, released in 1972. 11 tracks. Slipcase. Island.

Reissue of the late British folk icon's 1970 sophomore album. Ten tracks. Island.

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This is the second album from the Los Angeles based octet, Flogging Molly. Taking influence from their Irish roots and the sound of the Californian punk scene, 'Drunken Lullabies'is a mix of brash punk rock guitars, violins, whistles and accordians. The band are often compared to the Pogues and fellow punk band, The Dropkick Murphys.

Richard Thompson earned the respect of fans for his guitar playing with Fairport Convention in the late 1960s. But it was the albums he made with his then-wife Linda in the early 1970s that gained him the reputation as one the premier songwriters to emerge from the British folk-rock scene. The songs on this 16-song collection are taken from the couple's first four albums together: Henry the Human Fly (actually a Richard Thompson solo record with Linda's background vocals), the classic I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, Hokey Pokey, and Pour Down Like Silver. Linda's slightly husky alto inspired some of Richard's sweetest melodies, such as "Dimming of the Day," "For Shame of Doing Wrong," and "Down Where the Drunkards Roll," even as their sometimes rocky relationship caused him to write some of his gloomiest lyrics. The words may sometimes paint a bleak view of human relations, but the beauty of Linda's voice and the perfection of Richard's guitar lines do an excellent job of lightening the heavy mood. --Michael Simmons

Few musical charms compare with those of Richard Thompson's better albums. Mock Tudor easily ranks amongst them, thanks in part to inventive producers Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf, who help strike a melodious balance between Thompson's genre-hopping instrumental subtleties and the gritty rave-ups that characterize his full-flail live shows. Together again with Fairport drummer Dave Mattacks and bassist Danny Thompson (and with help on guitar and vocals from son Teddy), Thomspon is set free. There's a delightful, modal minisolo on "Sibella"; "Uninhabited Man" finds the former student of Sufism holding down a Led Zep-ish Eastern groove; and every other song is a subtle, midtempo, sure-fire hit in an alternate universe. Lyrically, Thompson sticks to dark-side-of-the-street subject matter; the majority of the songs describe a relationship gone over the edge or about to (Elvis Costello is Thompson's only peer when it comes to charming, post-Dylan misanthropy in song). Women are goddesses ("Cooksferry Queen"), a bad match ("Sibella," "Two-Faced Love"), evil temptresses ("Bathsheba Smiles," "Hard on Me"), and about to dump the protagonist any second now ("Crawl Back Under My Stone")--and that's just the first six songs! In "Cooksferry Queen" when Thompson sings, "People speak my name in whispers--what higher praise can there be," the singer-songwriter might well be describing himself. --Mike McGonigal

His odyssey through British and American folk and rock has taken Richard Thompson from Fairport Convention's initial stabs at becoming England's Jefferson Airplane to deserved status as an inimitable guitarist and songwriter; "possessor of the magic touch," as the Fairport anthem "Come All Ye" aptly dubbed him. Also playing Stratocaster, acoustic guitar, or mandolin, he has written an astonishing body of songs that can time-travel from moor and meadow to factory town and cyberspace and keep both tragedy and farce in focus. This superb 1991 solo album is no exception. Spurred by his darting electric jigs and reels, up-to-the-minute and old as the hills, the set juggles traditional forms and modern production to comment on sex education ("Read About Love"), homicide ("I Feel So Good") and, as always, love gone wrong ("I Misunderstood") or tragically interrupted ("1952 Vincent Black Lightning," at once a gentle parody of Beach Boys car songs and a rigorously constructed acoustic ballad). --Sam Sutherland

Eric Clapton had better marketing. That's the only way to explain why Richard Thompson isn't as famous as that other British guitar god. A brilliant, albeit subtle, guitar genius, Thompson writes wonderful songs that are sometimes rockin', sometimes haunting, and sometimes a little bit of both. And he presents them all in a voice that can only be called unique. Unlike most guitar heroes, Thompson is less based in the blues than he is in folk--dating back to his early years with the seminal Fairport Convention--but his has always been a folk music with bite and soul, adding things to the folk lexicon like rockabilly and zydeco. "Cooksferry Queen"--one of the 19 tracks on this compilation culled from the six albums Thompson released on Capitol between 1988 and 1999--features a guitar solo that's downright punk. Tracks like the semihit "I Feel So Good," "Razor Dance," and "Bathsheba Smiles" remain as exhilarating as anything you're apt to hear. Longtime fans will need to hear the three tracks previously unreleased on CD, including a new duet with son Teddy Thompson on "Persuasion" (co-written with Tim Finn) that is absolutely gorgeous. Ultimately, one longs for a box set that encompasses all eras (and labels) of this master's career, but Action Packed proves that the recent last third of it has been topnotch. --Bill Holdship

Full title - Liquid Acrobat As Regards The Air. First studio album for Island in 1971 reissued for the first time in USA on CD. Remastered with sound quality superior to previous Euro release. Lyrics included. 2002.

The final album Steeleye Span made before their initial breakup finds their lineup in serious transition--the great folk guitarist Martin Carthy had returned to the band after six years away, but several longstanding members had left, and punk and disco had become their Scylla and Charybdis. Consequently, Storm Force Ten is their most experimental album, centered on a pair of long tracks that go rather far afield from the British folk tradition: a strangely glossy cover of the Brecht/Weill classic "The Black Freighter" (from The Threepenny Opera), and "The Victory," a multi-part song about Lord Nelson with a gorgeously harmonized chorus and an L.A.-inflected arrangement. --Douglas Wolk