He has always specialised in writing about loss, bitterness and horror, and this is one of the most brilliantly gloomy albums in his long career. The outstanding track, surely, is the brooding and genuinely scary Dad's Gonna Kill Me, written from the viewpoint of a very frightened soldier in Baghdad, with brutal descriptions of life in Iraq matched against the lines "at least we're winning on the Fox Evening News" and some rousing fiddle work from Sara Watkins.  Full text...

This is Thompson in top form.  Full text...

The guitar and mandolin work are what we've come to expect and love from Thompson: all style, swagger, and nimbleness, bouncing on and off the backing band's beat, and elaborating or disregarding the leitmotifs at will. Nobody plays guitar quite like Thompson: With solos that can save even his weakest songs, and with better tunes that can stack up alongside the best of Dylan's or Cohen's, he's rock n' roll's most dependable recording artist—four decade's worth of albums without a single stinker.   Full text...

Folk-rock maestro's idiosyncratic path takes him to Baghdad and beyond.  Full text...

Running nearly 70 minutes, Sweet Warrior is perhaps too indulgent in the album's flabbier second half. But fans surely are happy to let Richard be Richard.  Full text...