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Apr 13, 2018He doesn’t miss a beat, doling out material that highlight every facet of his still-underrated talent.
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Apr 24, 2018The Tree of Forgiveness is autumnal John Prine, but it's also a potent reminder that his remarkable skills as a songwriter and his rough-hewn excellence as a singer haven't failed him yet.
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Apr 18, 2018While at 71 his voice is gruffer and scratchier than ever, the album is unapologetic about it; vocals are recorded close-up over sparse arrangements, with melodies that relax into cozy countryish territory and sometimes stray toward speech. Mr. Prine’s songs, as they have since his 1971 debut album, can sound both carefully chiseled and playfully off-the-cuff.
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Apr 13, 2018Tree of Forgiveness is his first set of originals in over a decade. It's produced by Dave Cobb, and it's very good, frequently brilliant, with all the qualities that define Prine's music.
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Apr 11, 2018Prine’s stance has stayed askew. Yet these songs are solid like good chairs you can settle into for a while.
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UncutApr 5, 2018Laughing in the face of mortality is a preoccupation, from the honky-tonk close "When I Get To Heaven" and "God Only Knows", but Prine's playful wit is best captured in "Egg & Daughter Nite, London Lincoln Nebraska, 1967 (Crazy Bone)." [May 2018, p.33]
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Apr 13, 2018The album’s just a little over half-an-hour long, and it’s all of a piece, conveying casual imagery that meanders from the hands-in-pockets wistfulness of drifting and kicking on trash cans (“Knockin’ on Your Screen Door”) to turning on the TV and looking out your window. Throughout, he has a virtuoso grasp of understatement.
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Apr 13, 2018This is the kind of record that preschoolers would find catchy enough to sing along with, accompanied by their grandparents. And yet, the wry, trippy humor and image-rich wordplay often feel futuristic, in the way they conflate time and space, sometimes wondrously, sometimes darkly.
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May 10, 2018The Tree of Forgiveness, ten breezy songs and thirty-three minutes long, is slight, but its brevity fits. The Tree of Forgiveness doesn’t rage against the dying of the light. Instead, it’s funny and it’s sad. It’s complicated. It’s over before you know it.
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Apr 24, 2018he Tree of Forgiveness is full of lines and hooks that nestle in the head. With strains of both seriousness and goofy charm, this Prine album demands repeated spins: it makes you reflect and grin, often at the same time.
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Apr 5, 2018Here’s hoping The Tree Of Forgiveness is not either an incidental or deliberate farewell. If it must be, at least it’s both a suitably goofy celebration of his career and a dignified capstone.