Released on the Cooking Vinyl label in August 2005, Front Parlour Ballads was literally a homemade album.

Thompson had a small studio built in his garage at home and recorded the tracks onto his laptop computer, adding his own overdubs as he deemed necessary.

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.

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.

As with Dylan, Thompson's singing is something of an acquired taste; here it ranges from the wild and declamatory to slow, brooding and often complex ballads... Thompson has always mixed humour with a bleak sense of impending danger, tragedy and anger (it was only appropriate that his retrospective compilation was titled Watching the Dark) and the songs here are often more bitter than sweet.