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''Front Parlour Ballads'' is an album by Richard Thompson released in 2005.

His 2005 release on the Cooking Vinyl label was a literally homemade album. Thompson's aim was to create an album that sounded small and intimate. ''Front Parlour Ballads'' has been hailed as his first solo, all acoustic album since 1981 but strictly speaking it's neither of those things - percussionist Debra Dobkin plays on two tracks, ''Let It Blow'' and ''My Soul, My Soul'' and Thompson himself adds electric guitar to the same two tracks.

Thompson had a small studio built in his garage at home and recorded the tracks onto his laptop computer, adding overdubs as he deemed necessary. Even Dobkin's contributions were recorded in the same way.

Thompson did not expect to sell many copies of ''Front Parlour Ballads''. The critics, as usual, acclaimed the new release, but rather more surprising were strong early sales in both the U.S. and Britain, and ''Front Parlour Ballads'' debuted in the indie charts on both sides of the atlantic. - Wikipedia

In a way, Richard Thompson has spent the last 40 years trying to modernize traditional English music, going back to his early days in Fairport Convention. His love of ye olde folk extends not just to his songwriting but also his extraordinary guitar work. On this spare acoustic album, where he plays most of the instruments, he shines when he ditches the sentimental customs of the parlour ballads themselves. As you quickly learn at one of his concerts, this is a very clever songwriter who's best when he himself remembers that; heard here, the infidelity tale "Let It Blow," the hilariously desperate pledge of love in "Miss Patsy" and the lustful yearning of "A Solitary Life" show off some of his finest writing about relationship crises.

If Thompson falls short on a number of moony love songs, he also unleashes his poison pen for balance on the harrowing slavery tale of "Row, Boys, Row," the seething hatred of "Should I Betray" and the sadistic revenge of "When We Were Boys at School." Program out five of the glum woman-on-a-pedestal songs and you're left with one of his best records in years.