Review
Throughout the album drips and burns. Shuffles, prowl, broods and twangs. Nugget begets nugget. He's on fire. -- Time Out (UK)
From the Artist
Chuck Prophet sat down with writer Alex Green to discuss the songs on No Other Love. Chuck on album track Summertime Thing:
AG: Recorded under the influence of Dr. Dre/Tupac Shakur. A sun-soaked urban shuffle that pays homage to the summer. You can feel the sweat down your back, the sting of debt, and you know its going to end, but you just dont care. This one has bounce...with steam. California soul that tips its hat to Roger Trout with the vocoder in the chorus. Pedal steel and vocoder are a deadly comboyou dont find that everyday.
CP: "Am I deluded or is it a hit? I'd like to have a hit. Instead of living like a community college student, maybe I could start to live like a grad student? Or maybe get one of those custom guitars with my name written across the fretboard in mother of pearl. I can see the video now: girls in bikinis singing into blow dryers.... Yeah!" We played this song recently and a Mission boho Clark Kent eyewear-donning hipster said to me, Chuck, I dont mean any disrespect, but that song put me right back where I was the first time I heard Night Moves.
About the Artist
Prophet was born in Whittier, a small California suburb. Right out of high school, he joined Green On Red, whose country-meets-folk-meets-too many drugs Americana was one of the early warning signs of the alt country scare to come. After his stint with Green On Red, Prophet headed off on his own shortly before the band disintegrated. In 1990, he released Brother Aldo, which Melody Maker called "as close to the genuine article as a white boy can get." Since then, Prophet's solo career has never let up, with each successive album gathering more praise than the last. Select magazine called him, "the best of this whole wracked-out, country-rock genre since Gram Parsons - and that's no hyperbole." Q magazine described him as "the missing link between Paul Westerberg and Bob Dylan." No Depression cited The Hurting Business as one of the best records of the year. In fact, Prophet has a rock and roll vitae that would make any musician blush with envy. He's worked with Cake, Kelly Willis, The Silos, The Mr. T. Experience and Warren Zevon, and is a member of the favorite unknown super group, Raisins In The Sun (Jim Dickinson, Jules Shear, Paul Kolderie, Sean Slade, Harvey Brooks). Not only that, hes had his songs covered by Kelly Willis, Kim Richey, Jim Dickinson, and even top 40 New Country pin-up Cyndi Thomson. Although one might think that after working with some of the most legendary names in the business, being around famous folks would lose its nerve-wracking charge, he admits that working with Warren Zevon "intimidated the dogshit out of me. It was the best paid internship I ever had."
No Other Love was recorded in Oakland and mixed in Tucson by Jim Waters (Jon Spencer, R.L. Burnside). For this, his sixth solo album and first for New West Records, Prophet continues to mutate the singer/songwriter mold, delivering an 11-track song cycle about dancing monkeys, failed criminals, and the storms that come between seasons. From the innuendo-laden "That's How Much I Need Your Love," with its prowling swagger, to the pleading farfisa-fueled soul of "Elouise," to the wistful closer, "Old Friends," No Other Love is a startling blend of dusty country, twangy R&B and lilting folk served up fresh with inventive production, the use of an Omnichord, punchbowl, hip-hop samples and string sections. Throughout the album, whether it's the seasons, friendships, or just plain getting older, Prophet is able - in a single moment - to illustrate the emotions that come with change. "Summertime Thing," a burning urban sidewalk shuffle that name checks both The Beach Boys' "Help Me Rhonda" and the Bay Area's beloved Delta, captures all the lazy beauty of the end of a California summer day. "After The Rain" is a gorgeous acoustic meditation, replete with Prophet's wife, Stephanie Finch, stepping in to sing a beautiful harmony. The rest of the lyrical subjects on No Other Love are varied and unpredictable: there are models that look like Sissy Spacek at the homecoming dance in Carrie, endearing criminals that blow a score and a reference to Richard Gere even works its way in. Although Prophet's compositions are rife with pop culture, the bigger picture is always much more complex. In "I Bow Down And Pray To Every Woman I See," he tackles the artifice and pain that Los Angeles can! afflict on a showbiz aspirant; and in "Run Primo, Run," two small-time hoods commandeer a heist that goes bad faster than they'd feared. The album is populated by small-time hustlers, weary romantics, and beautiful failures and although the narrators are all different people, they share the ability to observe the ephemeral world with the hope that despite the end of summer, a busted romance, and youth turning grayer, things will be okay. The songs form a dark and churning mosaic whose dusty country, rootsy shuffles and hazy blues come across as a soundtrack for the world when it's at its weariest, but most hopeful. - Alex Green
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