With his latest album, Further from the Country, as with previous work, William Prince mines rock, country, and folk traditions, ever the elegant curator. This time around, however, his narratives and portraiture are more leanly and seamlessly conjured. His baritone voice is at its most resonant.
The title song features Prince’s vocal undergirded by a propulsive beat and framed by bright guitars. Lyrically, Prince describes rurality as Edenic, associating the city with that part of ourselves that wants more, is driven to self-actualize, to win. He poses a significant question: “And if I go / Is the home that raised me no longer my own?” In other words, a la Blake, can innocence, wonder, that prelapsarian state be reclaimed once ambition and a sense of self have been activated?
On the spacious “All the Same”, the singer-songwriter weaves stories about a man whose life “was cut short by his own hand” and a woman who “worked at the Midway” and “knew everybody by their first name”. “On Rolls the Wheel”, replete with crunchy guitars, a slinky steel-pedal part, and heavy drumbeats, depicts the blessings and challenges of a trucker. Prince, like John Prine, has long reveled in a knack for universalizing the interiorities of people who work everyday jobs and live unheralded lives; throughout Further from the Country, however, he does it more credibly than ever. His characters are vivid, paradoxical, torn by various dissonances and ambivalences, rendered through recognizable plotlines and imagery.
The honky-tonk “Flowers on the Dash” recalls debut-era Sturgill Simpson. Guitar and fiddle solos are notable. On “Damn”, Prince crafts his mise-en-scène impeccably: “The emptiness is piling up / Sleepless nights feel so rough / And you ain’t takin’ your medication”. One imagines a wistful Tom Waits or Bukowski at his most vulnerable. At any rate, with an opening like that, it’s near impossible not to keep listening. Prince’s melody, too, is enticing, his voice complexly nuanced.
On “The Charmer”, Prince experiments with perspective and chronology. In his verses, he addresses a scene in third-person. Perhaps “the charmer” is Prince’s father, perhaps Prince is the child. The choruses are a first-person fast-forward, the child grown and placing his father in a retirement home. Prince’s ability to refrain from judgment despite the child being hurt by the father, even traumatized, is notably effective. The listener reaches his own conclusions, aware of the psychological and relational dynamics at play, rather than being led in a preset direction.
On “More of the Same”, amidst spry guitars, airy strings, and a buoyant vocal, Prince commits to positivity: “I’m only gonna speak good things if I can help it / Worry less about the future / Stop comparing myself / Be happy with what I have in hopes of more of the same”. In this way, his album achieves a broad arc, touching on tragedy, love, and the merits of resilience, ending with wise words that laud the good life.
Further from the Country spotlights a highly gifted singer-songwriter as he wrestles with sublime insights and archetypal emotions, conveying them via accessible and memorable templates. With his fifth album, Prince has become a singular presence, an alchemist, a myth-weaver, a steady glow on the Americana horizon.
