Prine, John: Fair & Square (Vinyl 2xLP)

John Prine’s Grammy Award-winning album Fair & Square will be available October 1st in three editions as a double LP for the first on vinyl time in sixteen years. This is a new pressing (with a new lacquer that sounds amazing) made in Detroit at Third Man Record Pressing.

Never an artist known to push himself harder than necessary, 2005’s Fair and Square was John Prine’s first album in five years, and his first set dominated by new material since 1995’s Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings (a live album, a set of covers and a collection of new recordings of older material helped fill the gap). Of course, Prine had a fair amount to occupy him during that decade between new albums, most notably a bout with cancer in 1999, and while by all accounts Prine beat the disease with proper treatment, the man on Fair & Square seems a good bit less scrappy and more contemplative than the guy who cut Prine’s most memorable material.

The lyric sheet for Fair & Square reads like classic John Prine, with plenty of sly regular-guy wit and pithy observations on the state of life (“Crazy as a Loon“), love (“She Is My Everything“) and the world around us (“Some Humans Ain’t Human” and “My Darlin’ Hometown“), but the spare, simple production (by Prine and engineer Gary Paczosa) and the rueful tone of Prine’s vocals suggest a man who is just a bit weary, though that seems to be not a matter of health as much as advancing maturity and the world around him (with “Some Humans Ain’t Human” explicitly addressing the War in Iraq amidst other recent failures of compassion).

2021 reissue.

1. Glory Of True Love
2. Crazy As A Loon
3. Long Monday
4. Taking A Walk
5. Some Humans Ain't Human
6. My Darlin' Hometown
7. Morning Train
8. The Moon Is Down
9. Clay Pigeons
10. She Is My Everything
11. I Hate It When That Happens To Me
12. Bear Creek Blues
13. Other Side Of Town
14. Safety Joe
15. Carousel Of Love
16. That's Alright By Me
17. That's How Every Empire Falls
18. Dual Custody