** 1/2 RICHARD THOMPSON, “Mirror Blue”; <i> Capitol</i>

You can think of Richard Thompson as a sort of quirky Clapton--a ‘60s survivor with a common-man voice, a supernatural touch on the guitar and scars on the soul, an inconsistent but ambitious artist who at his best forges spiritual and carnal concerns into music of rare resonance.

This time around he seems a little restless, stirring up his formula of folk rock and exotica by encouraging producer Mitchell Froom to go slightly wild with the atmospherics. The result is sometimes akin to Tom Waits’ aural theater, and while the experimental edge is invigorating, much of the material is emotionally pale and musically slight.

Thompson’s artistry soars when he sheds the trimmings, as in “King of Bohemia,” on which nylon-string guitar forms a protective halo around solemn words of solace. In “Beeswing,” simple Celtic-folk curlicues carry a deftly drawn, deeply felt portrait of the free spirit who won and eventually broke his youthful heart. The fading of her flower is “the price you pay for the chains you refuse,” he allows near the end of this intimate and epic gem.

Thompson is rarely so generous of spirit, and his head cold of a singing voice compounds a frequently patronizing tone. He’s an Elvis Costello-like lyricist in his romantic post-mortems, but his bitterness needs a Costello-caliber delivery to transcend self-absorption. Too often, Thompson seems trivially cranky.

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).