Chuck Prophet - 'Soap And Water' (Cooking Vinyl) Released 17/09/07

Chuck Prophet is a funny fellow for whom the genre of alt-country seems to have been made. The veteran singer-songwriter releases his eighth solo album which retains all the quirks and charm of previous releases and proves he ain’t got complacent, oh no no. In fact Prophet is nothing if not industrious. In the three years between this release and previous album ‘Age of Miracles’, he’s been reviving cult alt-country rockers Green on Red for a reunion tour, co-writing and producing country songstress Kelly Willis’ new album and contributing to the soundtrack of the Sundance Jury Award winning film ‘Teeth’ which tells the age old story of a woman with a toothed vagina. Yes, you heard correctly.

Anyway, we digress. ‘Soap and Water’ is vintage Prophet: crunchy guitar licks exploding from his trademark Telecaster underneath sweetly jaunty lyrics. As ever, no two songs sound quite the same. Kicking off with ‘Freckle Song’, with its relentless funky blues riff, Prophet proves that his songwriting skill is in juxtaposing the sublime with the ridiculous. “Falling and rising/Lost on the invisible sea” he croons before changing tack and declaring “I never liked your brother/Couldn’t stand that little bugger”. Touché. We weren’t entirely surprised, then, when a cursory listen to the album seemed to unearth a song called ‘You could make a dollar out of cheeses’. A hasty look at the sleeve actually revealed it to be called ‘Doubter Out of Jesus’ (more’s the pity), but the charm of Prophet’s songs is that such a ridiculous notion would not for one minute seem out of place.

The album is also not without its moments of power. The children’s choir and epic string arrangement of ‘Let’s Do Something Wrong’ may be a little unsubtle to say the least, but the overall effect is undoubtedly pleasing. Equally, ‘Would You Love Me’ and ‘Soap and Water’s loping bluesy lilts are set off a treat by Prophet’s own Iggy Pop-esque vocals. ‘Small Town Girl’, meanwhile, proves he can turn the volume down and still deliver. It features gentle rhythmic guitar under a male-female duel vocal (courtesy of his wife, Stephanie Finch) with warm organ accents and simple, mournful words. How lovely.

Needless to say, not everything hits the target: the afore-mentioned ‘Doubter Out of Jesus’ relies on a cheapo sounding keyboard riff that grates on the nerves. However, he quickly digs himself out of this ill-advised slump and for the most part keeps to the inventive country rock formula for which he is so well-known. Think of Chuck Prophet as a less excitable, more experimental Ryan Adams or a Tom Petty for the 20th century, and you’re on the right track, as this is an album that oozes blues-rock charm from every tobacco-stained pore.