Storm Windows

in the course of making an album of deceptively slap-happy folk-rock songs. john prine has managed to slip in some of the most delicate, compressed wordplay of his career. indeed, 'storm windows' strikes a stunning balance between the artist's last two radically different releases. storm windows shuffles between these extremes with a sly deftness. recorded in muscle shoals, the new album utilizes acoustic guitars and piano as proper rock & roll instruments, and producer barry beckett always makes sure that the singer's old-tomcat mewl dominates the mix. though the lp has its share of melancholy ballads (e.g., 'it's happening to you' which builds to a complex and ambivalent climax while intentionally employing the most banal love-song clichs). storm windows extends prine's lyrical mastery into the area of jaunty rock & roll where good times regularly turn bad.