This is Prine’s first album of (mainly) original songs for nearly a decade, and while it hardly breaks new ground, it does stand up as a worthy addition to a substantial catalogue of songs tracking his no-bullshit vision of white, working class America.
A recent scrap with throat cancer has added an attractive rasp to his trademark country twang, and he hasn’t lost that waspish turn of phrase either, with ‘Some Humans Ain’t Human’, a political snarl at Bush, made even more barbed by being set in gentle country waltz time. ‘Glory Of True Love’ is an intense slab of upbeat country, while Alison Krauss joins in on the folk-tinged ‘My Darling Hometown’. Prine ads some typical whimsy to the electric-guitar driven Band-like ‘She’s My Everything’ and sends himself up gloriously in the brilliant ‘Crazy Like A Loon’.
With songs that are sometimes funny, sometimes solemn, and lyrics that go way beyond trite Nashville cliche, Fair And Square is a welcome and overdue contribution by Prine to the global conversation and a very timely reminder to Irish artists that singer-songwriterdom needn’t exclude the odd dash of wicked humour.