The Missing Years was the first of 3 Prine albums to be labeled with the term "comeback record." Setting aside the fact that it's reductive to talk about a career as deep as Prine's in those terms, it is true that 5 years had passed since German Afternoons which, despite having the live favorite "Speed of the Sound of Loneliness," was a bit lackluster. On the other hand, The Missing Years was a continuation of the furrow Prine had been plowing ever since going independent in 1984: a polished country sound with a Nashville sheen, a preponderance of songs about romantic love, lots of writing collaborations, interspersed with the rootsier solo Prine compositions we all know & love. I'll be honest: this isn't my favorite version of John Prine. But compared to its Oh Boy label predecessors, the songcraft on The Missing Years is a cut above, & there are a few absolute classics that make it essential.
The album's calling cards are the big roots rockers like opener "Picture Show" & "Take a Look At My Heart," assisted by Tom Petty & Bruce Springsteen respectively. We also get a swanky, horn-heavy arrangement of the Beck & Frizzell song "I Want to Be With You Always," the strutting electric blues of "Great Rain," & the lovely "Unlonely" featuring Bonnie Raitt. But despite the overall quality of the plugged-in songs (almost all of which have co-writers), for me the soul of this album is in the sparser acoustic numbers. It's in those tunes, mostly written by Prine alone, that the off-kilter magic of his worldview & wry humor find their fullest expression. "All the Best" is an exhausted love song, balancing a desire to wish an ex-lover well with the unavoidable pain of feeling cast aside. (Conceptually it's the flipside of the good-naturedly bitter "Take a Look At My Heart.") More mixed relationship emotions are found in "Everybody Wants to Feel Like You," where Prine wonders why his lover doesn't make him feel desired & pursued the way he does her.
But the album saves its twin knockouts for the final 2 songs. "Everything Is Cool" starts with a typical Prine fingerpicked guitar figure before changing in to a warped, atonal version of same. The lyrics begin with the narrator trying unsuccessfully to convince the listener & himself that "everything is cool" after being dumped (we've all done this, right?), before it combusts into the kind of visionary intensity that is pure Prine: "I saw a hundred thousand blackbirds flying through the sky/They seemed to form a teardrop from a black-haired angel's eye/The tears fell all around me & washed my sins away/Now everything is cool, everything's okay."
The sort-of title track "Jesus: The Missing Years" closes the album, & finds Prine again accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. As a spoken-word piece interrupted by sung choruses, it anticipates the following album's masterpiece "Lake Marie." Through his peculiar cracked lens, Prine imagines the life of Jesus between ages 12 & 30 if he lived in the modern world: swimming pool orgies & Italy, psychedelic freakouts with the Beatles & Stones, assorted globetrotting adventures that bring him full-circle only to find his home empty. The song culminates in Jesus questioning his entire purpose with a devastating image: "I'm a human corkscrew & all my wine is blood." The song, like "The Sins of Memphisto" from earlier in the album, asks how we maintain our humanity in the confusing, increasingly alienating modern world. Personally, I love this side of Prine, but the more simple & pure love songs like "Unlonely" are gorgeous too. Prine is that rare songwriter who's able to make cynicism romantic & make pure romanticism cool. While not his most consistent album, The Missing Years gives you plenty of both.
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