30 years ago (can it really be that long?) John Prine released one of his best-ever albums, Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings. I remember at the original Twist & Shout location on South Pearl Street that we needed to order and re-order the album because Prine was definitively back with this album. But where had he even gone? Nowhere really – he just kept being himself and releasing album after album of good-to-great material from his classic 1971 debut John Prine (which every single time we play it here people ask if it’s a Best Of record) right on up to 1991’s excellent The Missing Years. There were hiccups, sure – a longer gap than usual after he left Atlantic in 1975 before his 1978 Asylum debut, then another pause after three albums for Asylum, deciding he wanted to control his own fate and founding his own label Oh Boy, where he put out every album he made for the rest of his life at his own pace.
After
the first two albums on Oh Boy did reasonably well – artistically great, but
not as commercially kick-ass as he wanted – Prine waited nearly five years to
start a new album. He discussed the idea with his then-manager of enlisting fan
Howie Epstein, of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, to produce a new album and Epstein
enthusiastically dove in, bringing half of the Heartbreakers with him (and
Petty himself – along with a slew of other famous Prine fans – to sing backing
vocals). The result, The Missing Years, a great collection of songs
that’s undergirded by his divorce that happened in the interim – check “All the
Best” for possibly the kindest and yet most final separation songs you’ll ever
hear. And many said between a five-year absence and a saved-up batch of great
tunes that Prine was “back” with this album, with critic David Fricke even
noting later that he felt the songs were the equal of those on John Prine.
I think it’s great, but not quite John Prine – after all, what is? Lost
Dogs and Mixed Blessings is, that’s what is.
For me, this one’s hands-down the
best one since his debut. It doesn’t hurt that it’s the first Prine album I
really dug into – this is the one that got me into the debut rather than the
other way around – but I think back to all those folks making us need to
reorder box after box of the album and I don’t think I’m the only one who
thinks it’s in the upper echelon of his catalog. There was a Christmas album in
the interim and a great two-disc collection for the CD era to catch people up –
that probably helped boost this one too – but it’s really boosted by the songs.
Second time out, Epstein and Benmont Tench have really dialed in their work
with Prine, and Epstein knows how push Prine in just the right direction to
decorate the album with hooks. Take “Lake Marie,” which became a concert staple
performed in (I believe) every single live show I saw from Prine afterward, or
“Ain't Hurtin' Nobody,” a (slightly) more grown-up version of the debut’s
“Illegal Smile.” Check the way his divorce still haunts him seven years later
on “Humidity Built the Snowman” – and probably the way “Day Is Done” and “This
Love is Real” announce his burgeoning relationship with his new manager Fiona
Whelan, who’d be named Fiona Prine by the end of 1996. Revel in his goofy sense
of humor bordering on the surreal on “Leave the Lights On” and “He Forgot That
It Was Sunday,” and his jabs at the overwhelmingly consumerist world on “Quit
Hollerin’ At Me.” Enjoy guests from Marianne Faithfull to Waddy Wachtel
livening up their respective bits. Enjoy the bonus tracks, five alternate
versions and the completely prev-unrel “Hey Ah Nothin” on the deluxe CD reissue. And I’ll leave the
rest of the discovery to you. Top to bottom, he doesn’t have a better album. You
ain’t gonna catch me saying this is his best, I swear, because the debut and
maybe the next one, In Spite of Ourselves, are basically just as good,
but neither one is better than this.
-
Patrick
Brown
