Teddy Thompson

Up Front and Down Low finds Teddy Thompson cantilevered over a landscape of Nashville back catalog gems while making a confident attempt to join Chris Isaac as a modern medium for Roy Orbison's blue crooning. Evident are both his early years weaned on country music and his latter day efforts as part of Roseanne Cash's touring band. Exceptionally tidy arrangements for strings, pedal steel, and organ recall gospel recordings of the '50s, while the lone Thompson original, "Down Low," shines apace with covers of Elvis Presley, Ernest Tubb, George Jones and Dolly Parton.