John Prine

John Prine writes songs that are still funny the 50th time you hear them. And when he writes about the human condition, he gives Dylan and Townes Van Zandt serious runs for their money, at times even beating them. There are a bunch of moments on this triumphant 1978 comeback album where Prine blows the doors off of everybody. "That's the Way the World Goes Round" is one.

Just for a minute, think about Larry McMurtry's T-shirt. Several years back, feeling passed
over and generally bum rapped, McMurtry took to sporting a shirt of his own design,
featuring a particularly nettlesome phrase from an unneighborly review emblazoned across
his chest: minor regional novelist. Better than a hair shirt, anyway. But think what John
Prine could have done with such a garment. "Faded Folkie" his might have read. "... More >

In the title tune, Prine reports that he's transcended his anger, and I'm happy for him, but a little worried about his music. Common Sense was agitated to the point of psychosis, but it had an obsessive logic nevertheless. Here Prine sounds like he's singing us bedtime stories, and while the gently humorous mood is attractive, at times it makes this "crooked piece of time that we live in" seem as harmless and corny as producer Steve Goodman's background moves; no accident that the closer, "The Hobo Song," is Prine's most mawkish lyric to date. Still, Edward Lear's got nothing on this boy for meaningful nonsense, and just to prove he's still got the stuff he collaborates with Phil Spector on a surefile standard: "If You Don't Want My Love," with lyrics worthy of its title. (Grade - B+)