Music snobbery is tricky, ironic business. Critics' darlings can go from being called "underappreciated" to "overrated" in far less time than it took them, originally, to "cut their career tragically short", i.e., eat bad acid, die or break up the band. Even Richard Thompson — who has been a nabob's pet ever since he and the rest of Fairport Convention refined folk-rock for British ears in the late '60s, and has consistently ducked under the wire of commercial success, a sure strategy for remaining a critical fave — even Thompson has suffered some snarky slings and arrows. Last year, Vanity Fair's enormous music issue featured a "Rock Snob's Dictionary" that said "Thompson provided the template for a slew of younger, similarly overpraised troubadours such as Freedy Johnston, Vic Chestnutt and Ron Sexsmith."

"I should cancel my subscription," laughed Thompson when I nervously read him the entry. "There's always a lot of rude stuff. It's the price of being reviewed or being mentioned in the press. … I think at the end of the day, it means that the critics are not a reliable source of support. If you think that they love you, next year they might hate you. So you'd better find some other means of feeling good about yourself."

Thankfully for Thompson, there's plenty of other things to make him feel good. For one thing, he's a proud father. The first disc by son Teddy was released by Virgin last year, to good notices. Daughter Kamila, though currently engaged in academic pursuits, just made her live singing debut alongside her father at L.A.'s Troubadour. "My daughter is very musical," says a softly beaming Thompson, "but she's also good at everything else."

Thompson is about to begin a new stage in his own career, having left Capitol Records after 13 years. To commemorate the event, the label has released a new collection, Action Packed, assembling cuts from his five Capitol albums. To please Thompson completists, the disc also boasts one new track (the Tim Finn/Thompson collaboration "Persuasion") and two songs that were previously available only on vinyl.

It's also a great place for new Thomp-sonites (that would be me). Traditional ballads like "Beeswing" and "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," the smooth pop of "I Misunderstood" and twisted rockers like "I Feel So Good" and "Cooksferry Queen" all illuminate different aspects of Thompson's charms: intricate, inventive wordplay, mighty use of a distinctive baritone, intense guitar skills, and falling gently over it all, the dusk of pessimism.

"1952 Vincent Black Lightning," off of 1991's Rumor and Sigh, is the most requested song on NPR in the U.S., and a great example of why Thompson is a unique artist. In many ways, it's the most traditional of Celtic balladry — galloping acoustic guitar work stands alone, underscoring a story of doomed love. Its mythological beast is modern, though — a vintage British motorcycle. And the lady pined for by its dashing, dangerous hero is a redhead clad in black leather, "my favorite color scheme." The story and the melody are more than enough to raise your gooseflesh, but the way Thompson shoves the words out of his lungs in forceful thrusts, practically coughing out the final words, is wont to cause repeated shivers upon first listen.

So what's next for Thompson? Wouldja believe … children's music? For the last three or four years, Thompson has been asked by various schools to write educational songs, and he has obliged, slowly and steadily accumulating an album's worth of tunes. "At some point," he says, "I think I will record those, and put them out in a kind of small, humble way. I think they're for the more cynical child."

Richard Thompson hand-picked Amy Correia to open for him, from a number of artists suggested by Capitol Records, and it's easy to see why. Like Thompson, Correia has a way with words that would make lyricists twice her age get their green up. And, like the elder artist, she's a bit over the media; they tend to linger over the fact that Correia, who left the small town of Lakewood, Mass., for New York City at the age of 17, is a small-town girl who made good in the big city. "I'm 32,' she says, "so most of half my life has been in New York and now in L.A. … I guess it's just a story, and people can hold on to it."

There are many more stories to behold on Correia's Capitol debut, Carnival Love. Her girlish voice and occasionally jazzy phrasing evoke an airier Rickie Lee Jones, or a more mannered and velvety Mary Lou Lord. A distant cousin to Shannon Wright's 1999 Flightsafety, Carnival Love shares with that album a fairground theme, a dark mood, diverse instrumentation (many played by the ladies in question) and chilling moments of sparse power. The two women's voices are even similar, though Correia avoids the melodramatic shrieking that Wright has become prone to on recent recordings. And where Wright's lyrics are self-referential and oblique, Correia's are linear, fresh, specific.

"Love doesn't knit you a sky full of stars/ carry you off like a baby in its arms," Correia sings on "Fallen Out of Love." On the waltzing, Tom Waitsian power ballad "Carnival," she sings softly "And the fat lady looked so beautiful/ Under the fried dough moon/ And the rough sailor boy with his unanchored eye/ He was the only one there made that solid woman swoon." And on "The Bike," she even spins an analogous tale to Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning."

Correia uses lots of these kinds of images in her work, but "The Bike" is a more optimistic ode to vehicular freedom than Thompson's, a funky, freewheeling number about a bicycle she inherited from her great uncle Pat. This song is also one of many on Correia's album that draw from childhood and adolescent memories.

"I don't think I've been very successful at writing about things going on in the present," she admits. "I need a little distance to kind of observe them again. … After a little passage of time, I can really look at it."

Though Carnival Love is a studio-created affair, with overdubs, walls of sound and a number of musicians assisting Correia (who herself plays guitar, keyboards, percussion, banjo, mandolin and baritone ukulele), on tour it's just she and her cellist friend, Gerri Sutyak. "I think that will come, down the line," she says of touring with a band. "Part of the reason I'm out on the road in such a stripped-down fashion is, it's just the beginning, and it's easier, not just financially but creatively."

She's looking ahead, to infusing her next recording with live energy. "I think (Carnival Love) doesn't have something that I really appreciate about the live performance, which is the musicians communicating musically," she says. "… I'm still learning how to achieve what I want to in the studio."

This article appears in May 24-30, 2001.