Chuck Prophet – ‘The Land Time Forgot’ (Yep Roc Records)

Chuck Prophet – ‘The Land Time Forgot’ (Yep Roc Records)

‘The Land That Time Forgot’  Was written for the most part with Prophets longtime co-conspirator,  but after the initial splurge of nailing three tracks in San Fran with Grammy-winning alchemist Matt Winegar, Prophet confesses,

“We hit a wall. Schedules. Money. Towed vehicles: a thousand large to get one van out of lockup.” So the San Fran troubadour returns with his new album varying from the rich heartland rock of songs like ‘Best Shirt On’, to the drum machine driven  ‘Marathon’ and all the way back to stripped back words and guitar of ‘Nixonland’ and ‘Get Off the Stage’, Prophet’s work has always been sublime from his days as the perfect foil for Dan Stuart in the magnificent Green On Red to the roots folk and Americana of his early solo career. Chuck Prophet is a rock and roll star a real gunslinger of the six-string variety in a world that needs rock and roll stars and songwriters that just ooze class and quality.

There’s something quite beautiful about the track  ‘Paying My Respects To The Train’, Turn the record player up loud, sit back,  close one’s eyes and let Chuck pour some good times into my stereo speakers with that mellow baritone croon as he start singing and his stories paint a thousand pictures with the beautiful and dovetailed harmonies of his partner in crime  Stephanie Finch, that have always worked so well together on his albums from the early knockings of Brother Aldo to this like a modern-day Cash and Carter.

‘Fast Kid’ has so much going on whilst swaggering outta the speakers there’s a steady beat holding everything together over some contrasting synths and slide with some easter sounds for good measure all adding up to an incredible listen.

The acoustic ‘Love Don’t Come From The Barrel Of A Gun’ is more upbeat than it sounds whereas ‘Nixonland’ is smoldering storytelling at its very best from the snare brushes to the softly spoken words your hanging onto his every word man he could be reading the phone book and it would still be cool.

The album continues to twist and turn with the fantastic balladeering of  ‘Meet Me At The Roundabout’ and ‘Womanhood’ to the final cut of ‘Get Off The Stage’ and its autobiographical lyrics and spot-on assessment for a certain individual and another twist to complete what is a blindingly good record and I haven’t even gushed over ‘High Like Johnny Thunders’.  Let’s just say that this is an album you shouldn’t forget and one you should cherish and love as much as his previous albums, a real genuine American talent of the highest grade, just get yourself a copy and play it to death you deserve it and Chuck Prophet deserves it.

Buy it Here

Author: Dom Daley

Dan Stuart- The Unfortunate demise of  Marlowe Billings (Cadiz Music)

Dan Stuart- The Unfortunate demise of  Marlowe Billings (Cadiz Music)

Nev Brooks.

Not so long back I caught a great doubleheader over the bridge in Bristol consisting of Jesse Malin and Chuck Prophet. Now people in the know would probably remember Chuck Prophet from his days in a band called Green on Red, I caught them live a couple of times back in the day, and could never quite categorize them, psychedelic, alt-country, alt-rock, indie there were so many labels that fitted but if you got bogged down in how to listen to them from which viewpoint you missed the fact that they were a Bloody good live band. Where am I going with this, not long after seeing Chuck this little beauty dropped in my inbox from Dan Stuart, the guitarist, and frontman of Green on Red.

Settling in and kicking back you are immediately caught up in the production, it’s so clean, the music breathes, its given space. There’s something in the picked intro to opener March 5th, 1961 that pulls you into the story that runs through the LP, setting you up chapter by chapter, song by song.

We drift through the story, it’s definitely got that Alt-Country vibe, steeped in that Americana tradition. Moods and emotions change as you work your way through and fleetingly my thoughts drift towards the Who as a point of reference especially on “Here comes my boy”.  There’s even a hint of Bowie wrapped around “Tucson”, what I’m saying is very much as with Green on Red you can’t quite label things, to me a sign of how comfortable someone is with their music, letting things develop organically taking on its own life story, following its own pathway to the finish.

This LP draws in so many references to so many different artists, sometimes Lou Reed, Sometimes Roger Waters, Sometimes Roger Daltrey, Sometimes Steve Earle, what have they all got in common? They are fantastic storytellers.

I would class as one of those evenings into late nite LP’s when your sat, drifting along with the sound, watching the sun go down following the story as it unfolds. This is a companion piece to a novel that will be published at the same time the third part in the Marlowe Billings trilogy.  This is an excellent piece of work getting darker as the LP moves forward track by track someone going through their life story, laying everything bare. Well worth some attention from a much wider audience.

Buy the album Here

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