How I Like John Prine: The Albums, pt. 2

Part 1 is here. My handy dandy profoundly subjective numerical rating scheme is decoded here.

Aimless Love (1984) 8
German Afternoons (1986) 8
The Missing Years (1991) 8
A John Prine Christmas (1993) 5
Great Days: The John Prine Anthology (1993) 6
Lost Dogs And Mixed Blessings (1995) 5
In Spite Of Ourselves (1999) 9
Souvenirs (2000) 6
Fair & Square (2005) 8
Standard Songs For Average People (with Mac Wiseman) (2007) 6
For Better, Or Worse (2016) 8
The Tree Of Forgiveness (2018) 8

After a decade of critically hailed albums, two major label stints and zero hits, John Prine, though respected for his wry, empathetic folk-country songbook, was no longer a “New Dylan.” Steve Goodman, the Chicago compatriot who played a pivotal role in getting Prine heard outside Chicago, followed his own time at Asylum Records by self-releasing a live album in 1983. Its success inspired Prine (who shared manager Al Bunetta with Goodman) to start Oh Boy Records, self-funding the release of 1984’s Aimless Love with fan support.

Aimless Love was a near-masterpiece of Nashville craft removed from corporate pressure. Everyone from Shel Silverstein and Bobby Braddock to Spooner Oldham and Dan Penn contributed to the writing, but you’d be hard pressed to guess which songs were self-penned and which weren’t, thanks to a consistent tone of weathered romantic optimism (Prine, splitting with his high school sweetheart at the end of the last decade, had just married Rachel Peer, who duets on “Unwed Fathers”). Co-producing with Goodman and Jim Rooney, Prine hadn’t released music that so politely refused to pick a commercial lane since his debut, unintentionally helping to craft the softer side of the “Americana” sound, along with fellow Rooney collaborator Nanci Griffith. Though not as woolly as Neil Young’s Comes A Time, Prine’s ragged voice offset by tasteful yet omnipresent digital reverb, Love is a similar portrait of reflective re-eligible bachelorhood.

(Goodman and Prine also co-wrote “You Never Even Called Me By My Name,” a big hit for David Allan Coe in 1975. Prine declined credit - they’d written it some years earlier, drunk as fuck - but got a Wurlitzer jukebox from Goodman for his troubles. When Goodman died the same year as Aimless Love’s release, Oh Boy took over managing Goodman’s Red Pajamas Records, releasing Grammy-winning tributes and posthumous recordings.)

German Afternoons is the Diamonds In The Rough to Aimless’ self-titled debut: a little rowdier and less considered, Prine not bothering to edit a hook like “you’ve broken the speed of the sound of loneliness.” Or maybe it’s the 80's Sweet Revenge, what with the increased smirking and Prine’s cowboy boots back on the cover. “Linda Goes To Mars” is a hilarious spin on what it must be like to watch your wife dream of angelic life in Montgomery, complete with boisterous background vocals. “Let’s Talk Dirty In Hawaiian” should have been given uncredited to David Allan Coe, though.

I first heard about Prine from the hype cycle for 1991’s The Missing Years, which kicked off with a four-star Rolling Stone review and ended with a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Ironically, it wasn’t folk but rock that inspired the buzz. Howie Epstein, one of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, produced the album, and everyone from Tom to Bruce to Bonnie to one of the Everlys and the lady from the Divinyls sang in the background. Reverbed twang falls behind gated drums in the mix, and yes, I think I know better than critics who called The Missing Years a “comeback” (the album’s title, and the relative vogue for DIY in the ‘90s, helped that impression too). It’s a good album, despite Epstein demanding longer songs and more of them for the CD age, but I get cranky when people act like Prine was actually missing in the decade before. To Epstein’s credit, “The Sins Of Memphisto” - a last gasp from the end of the session - might be the best hooky, kooky novelty number Prine ever made. And I ain’t mad at the novel sounds LA hands like David Lindley, Benmont Tench and Phil Parlapiano bring to gentler numbers like “It’s A Big Old, Goofy World” either. Prine singing over a Mike Campbell blues exercise nine songs in out of fourteen, though? Miss me with that bloat.

A John Prine Christmas is a near-concept EP about getting dumped by wife number 2 around Christmas and meeting wife number 3 soon after. But moreso, it’s a Missing Years remix single padded out with covers and live arcana. A double CD retrospective, Great Days, featuring songs from his years at Atlantic, Asylum and Oh Boy, isn’t bloated at 41 tracks, and recommended if you’d rather have two discs of quality Prine instead of the eight or so he’d recorded up to this point. 

Full disclosure: I’ve long stayed away from Lost Dogs And Missed Blessings, Prine and Epstein’s second collaboration, as I liked the idea of an unheard Prine album out there if I needed it. To first play it while writing a long career overview was the antithesis of my intent, and - predictably - I’m nowhere near hungry enough to enjoy him immersed in adult-alternative rock cliches already losing steam by the album’s 1995 release. Especially for a goddamn hour. Ballads like “The Day Is Done” and “I Love You So Much It Hurts Me” escape the crossover whallop, though “This Love Is Real” is done in by a baffling Marianne Faithfull cameo (I had no idea Prine got there before Metallica!). “Lake Marie” became a concert staple, probably because it sounds like a cross between Tom Petty and Garrison Keillor. But I come to Prine for folk-country with a rock attitude, not folksy, countrified rock. 

Prine already wanted to change course by the time he was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1998. But between that ordeal - which wore down his already haggard voice despite considerable therapy - and his new life with third wife Fiona and their children (his first), it makes sense his next album would be a hard left. What couldn’t be predicted is how rewarding the outcome would be. In Spite Of Ourselves, a collection of country covers done as duets, could have been a stopgap if Prine’s taste in material wasn’t so strong, and his partners (from Melba Montgomery to Iris Dement, Lucinda Williams as “rock” as it gets) weren’t so assured. Ironically or fittingly, Prine’s sole songwriting credit - the jocular, romantic victory lap of a title track - became the most streamed song of his career. 

Souvenirs, old staples recorded with his new voice, is the stopgap In Spite Of Ourselves isn’t, with far too many songs from the debut (presumably for sync purposes). I’m glad to hear “Fish And Whistle” without the damn pennywhistle, though. This is a fine place to acknowledge that I’m not bothering to assess any of Prine’s live releases, which I’m sure are pleasant but inessential home listening if you already have over ten studio albums. Truly grateful I saw him live, though. He even redeemed “Lake Marie” by dancing over his guitar at the end of it. Rock’n’roll!

It wasn’t until six years after Spite - ten after Lost Dogs - that Prine released a new album of originals. Bless his heart for waiting until he had enough songs worth sharing about how glad he was to be alive and happy with his family. Charming and well-crafted (it’s his gentlest album since Aimless Love) but coming off slight upon release, Fair & Square has accrued weight by being the only “autumnal” album of John Prine originals we’ve got. Odds are, if you’re a fan under 50 - and I never saw more adult children and their parents at a show together than at Prine’s - Fair is John Prine as you knew him. 

Another decade plus of tours, label management, parenthood and chill followed, interrupted for an album of duets with bluegrass hero Mac Wiseman in 2007 and For Better, Or Worse, a sequel to In Spite Of Ourselves, in 2016. Between the lack of vocal variety and the relative familiarity of the songs, the Wiseman album rarely transcends pleasantry, but the parade of ladies on Worse (newer names like Miranda Lambert and Kacey Musgraves alongside Lee Ann Womack and Kathy Mattea) keeps things lively even when Prine runs out of deep cuts to cover and dips into the Great American Songbook. 

The kids leaving the nest and another bout of cancer may explain why 2018’s The Tree Of Forgiveness (which debuted at number 5 despite Prine only breaking the Top 30 once before) is more wintry than autumnal. Even more croaky than before, Prine drolly fantasizes about the old folks’ home on “Egg & Daughter Nite, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1967 (Crazy Bone),” with “When I Get To Heaven” thinking even further along. “The Lonesome Friends Of Science” asserts fantasy & family will get him through the apocalypse, though “Summer’s End” and “Caravan Of Fools” make clear he’s not happy to see that faith put to the test. Hot names like Amanda Shires, Brandi Carlisle & Dan Auerbach feature in the recording and songwriting credits, but nobody’s trying to break what doesn’t need fixing in terms of arrangements (though there is a little more mellotron than usual). 

Sadly, what was intended as a return to recording became his last testament, COVID doing what cancer couldn’t in 2020. Fiona Prine has kept Oh Boy Records going in his wake, releasing albums by artists as young and daring as protest singer Tre Burt and as old and idiosyncratic as Swamp Dogg, as well as tributes to Alice Randall and John Prine. Though it can feel like Prine didn’t really change much over the decades, his songbook - and that illegal, yet sensitive smile - hasn’t lost any value or relevance. 

In Spite Of Ourselves is at 190 on my Top 300 Albums of All Time, and Aimless Love might sneak in at the bottom next year. I'm telling you this because I've found people are more inclined to discuss and share reviews if there's a quantitative element at the top or bottom they can easily debate. Prove me right! Direct correspondence can be shipped off to anthonyisright at gmail dot com.