Richard ThompsonBest Richard Thompson Albums Ranked

Walking on a Wire: 1968–2009

rollingstone

9.0

“A perennial dark-horse contender for the title of Greatest Living Rock Guitarist, Thompson has been boxed before — 1993’s triple-disc Watching the Dark and the five-disc 2006 rarities set, RT. While fanatics will debate omissions ("The End of the Rainbow," "ASailor’s Life," "When the Spell Is Broken"), normal folks should be sated by this excellent […]”

Music From Grizzly Man

pitchfork

8.0

“With help from Jim O’Rourke and Henry Kaiser, the British guitarist supplies the bittersweet backdrop to Werner Herzog’s 2005 film about humans’ doomed desire to conquer nature.”

You? Me? Us?

rollingstone

8.0

“For a singer/songwriter and guitarist long hailed as a great folk-rock romanticist, Richard Thompson actually prefers the company of misery. There are few truly happy endings in his extensive catalog. Like Elvis Costello, Thompson specializes in the mordant humor and plaintive spectacle of prolonged goodbyes, uneasy compromises and bedroom espionage. But Thompson’s special genius is […]”

Mirror Blue

rollingstone

8.0

“Richard Thompson’s superb new album, Mirror Blue, boasts no bold forays or shocking twists, only the same fervid but stringently unsentimental writing and musicianship that has always distinguished this seminal folk rocker’s best work. Like Rumor and Sigh (1991), Blue sounds contemporary without self-consciously striving to be hip. Fitting warm Celtic textures into taut arrangements, […]”

Amnesia

rollingstone

8.0

“Ho-hum, another first-rate Richard Thompson album. Since he left the pioneer folk-rock unit Fairport Convention in the early Seventies, the British guitarist, songwriter and singer has released record after record of emotionally explosive music featuring powerful deliberations on love, death and tradition. On Amnesia, Thompson has the difficult task of following up 1986’s Daring Adventures, […]”

Across a Crowded Room

rollingstone

8.0

“Across a Crowded Room is the first Richard Thompson solo album in thirteen years to be released on a major label, and by any standard other than his own it’s a very fine record, replete with rollicking rhythms, master-class guitar excursions and piercing lyrical apercus. However, longtime Thompson listeners may find that, compared to much […]”