John Prine did have a brilliant idea: revisit great duet numbers with the likes of Lucinda Williams and Iris DeMent. He even gets George Jones’s onetime sidekick Melba Montgomery to reprise two of her own songs, including the 1963 “Let’s Invite Them Over”–the closest Nashville has come to the topic of spouse swapping. But neither Prine’s wry, alt.-country sensibility nor his ragged-but-right voice does the idea justice. He was shooting for second-take spontaneity and bemused affection; what comes across is casual condescension. Prine’s partners didn’t work out their parts well–sometimes they just settle for ugly unison. The old versions of Montgomery’s songs worked because Jones crafted a lower harmony to her high lead; Prine chooses (or has) to sing melody, losing not just purist points but all that sweet tension. True, the Prine-Patty Loveless “Back Street Affair” beats the Pierce-Channing. But not by much.
After Prine’s overthinking and Rimes’s oversinging, the sheer modesty of Alan Jackson’s new album of covers, “Under the Influence,” seems as refreshing as his unfancy Haggard-Jones voice–and his righteous cantankerousness at this year’s CMA Awards. (When they wouldn’t give Jones time enough to sing all of his hit “Choices,” Jackson used his own slot to sing it.) Instead of done-to-death masterworks (does the world need Rimes’s “Your Cheatin’ Heart”?), he chooses mostly obscure songs he’s happened to enjoy over the years; it’s like hearing a good, smart bar band in about 1977, before country music went all to hell. Your taste may not always agree with his–“Margaritaville”? with Jimmy Buffett himself?–but if you don’t like his takes on Jim Ed Brown’s “Pop a Top” or Haggard’s “The Way I Am,” there’s no hope for you. There are, however, lots of new “country” records. Leave this one for folks who can handle it.
