John Prine home page John Prine Music - Lyrics, Chords, Repertoire, Tabs, Song note, guitars, album reviews, Trivia and information John Prine Tour Dates, Concerts, Tickets, Venue, and Artist Links John Prine Biography information John Prine picture show - image  links and items to buy John Prine souvenirs, 35 years of posters, cds, albums, clothing and more John Prine message board, chat room, misheard lyrics, guest book, polls, Prine poetry, lots of Prine fan participation Live Music Trader forums, cd art, set Lists, boots
AIMLESS LOVE
John Prine Current News Updates

JOHN PRINE REVIEWS

CONCERT REVIEWS BY YEAR
2012| 2011| 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000

 

JOHN PRINE ALBUM REVIEWS 

AIMLESS LOVEAIMLESS LOVE  
     BY JOHN PRINE

1984 - Produced by Jim Rooney
Tracks: Be My Friend Tonight, Aimless Love, Me, Myself and I, The Oldest Baby In The World, Slow Boat To China, The Bottomless Lake, Maureen, Maureen, Somewhere Someone's Falling In Love, People Puttin' People Down, Unwed Fathers, Only Love

LYRICS AND CHORDS


- Get it at
- Oh Boy Records

- Amazon.com
 
Sound clips


AIMLESS LOVE REVIEWS:

By: C-60 Low Noise
Read all Prine album reviews at C-60 Low Noise blog here
BACK TO BASIC - full review here
   John Prine, one of the most unheralded major songwriters of the 1970's, was back with his first album in more than four years, ''Aimless Love,'' recorded on his own West Coast label, Oh Boy Records.

  Mr. Prine, who made his reputation in 1971 singing bleak dramatic monologues like ''Sam Stone'' and ''Hello, In There,'' has explored rockabilly and Southern country-soul idioms with varying degrees of success, but on ''Aimless Love'' he has returned triumphantly to the ultra-spare country-folk idiom of his earliest and finest records.
   Prine's latest songs are wry, pithy vignettes of rural life with dirt- plain melodies sung in a keening true- grit voice that has always borne a close resemblance to Bob Dylan. The album's best songs are peopled with typical Prine characters - grotesque losers viewed with a mixture of compassion and tough humor. ''The Oldest Baby In the World'' draws a sharp portrait of a hot-blooded middle-aged woman who is unable to grow up. In ''Maureen, Maureen,'' a man tells his wife he's shot a doctor on a plane and bailed out of the aircraft to come home. When his wife doesn't believe him, he admits ''the things that I'm thinking ain't necessarily the things that I say - there's a hole between us.''

  Many of the songs' oddball characters are so desperate for adventure and love that dreaming up such wild fantasies is the only way they can really feel alive. Songs like ''Be My Friend Tonight'' and the album's title song compellingly evoke the rock-bottom loneliness that Mr. Prine sees as an essential condition of many American lives.



By STEPHEN HOLDEN
January 30, 1985, Wednesday - NYTIMES
   'Aimless Love,' New Album Of Songs by John Prine
John Prine, one of the most unheralded major songwriters of the 1970's, is back with his first album in more than four years, ''Aimless Love,'' recorded on his own West Coast label, Oh Boy Records. Mr. Prine, who made his reputation in 1971 singing bleak dramatic monologues like ''Sam Stone'' and ''Hello, In There,'' has explored rockabilly and Southern country-soul idioms with varying degrees of success, but on ''Aimless Love'' he has returned triumphantly to the ultra-spare country-folk idiom of his earliest and finest records.
   Mr. Prine's latest songs are wry, pithy vignettes of rural life with dirt- plain melodies sung in a keening true- grit voice that has always borne a close resemblance to Bob Dylan. The album's best songs are peopled with typical Prine characters - grotesque losers viewed with a mixture of compassion and tough humor. ''The Oldest Baby In the World'' draws a sharp portrait of a hot-blooded middle-aged woman who is unable to grow up. In ''Maureen, Maureen,'' a man tells his wife he's shot a doctor on a plane and bailed out of the aircraft to come home. When his wife doesn't believe him, he admits ''the things that I'm thinking ain't necessarily the things that I say - there's a hole between us.''
   Many of the songs' oddball characters are so desperate for adventure and love that dreaming up such wild fantasies is the only way they can really feel alive. Songs like ''Be My Friend Tonight'' and the album's title song compellingly evoke the rock-bottom loneliness that Mr. Prine sees as an essential condition of many American lives. The album is available at some retail outlets and can be ordered by mail by sending
$9 postpaid to Oh Boy Records, P.O. Box 67800- 5333, Los Angeles, Calif. 90067.

Q (7/93, p.111) - 4 Stars - Excellent
- "...AIMLESS LOVE boasts Jennifer Warnes's vocal sweetening on `Slow Boat To China,' plus the surreal hoe-down of `The Bottomless Lake,' and nine more songs of wit and whimsy that play your heartstrings like Paganini..."


From: Joe Sixpack

RATING: ALL TIME FAVORITES 
Mature, mournful and moving... possibly his best album, If I were pressed, really hard, to pick my favorite John Prine record, this would be it. The gentleness and affection with which Prine approaches human weakness is quite moving, as is his skill expressing it. This is a mature and finely crafted album, with mystifying songs of pathetic love ("Maureen"), mildly scolding morality tales ("Unwed Fathers"), a patent-pending Prine-style nonsense song ("Bottomless Lake"), and the ethereal, life-affirming lullaby, "Only Love." Prine took five years to organize his life so that he could make the records he wanted to make, and the results straight out the gate were pretty impressive. Highly, highly recommended.

FROM: Al MacLeod
RATING: ALL TIME FAVORITES
Of my 5 cd's I'd take to an island, this and Bruised Orange are 2. Almost every song is a classic.


FROM: robert tisi 
RATING: ALL TIME FAVORITES
John's Always Had That Country Flavour To His Music But This One Leans Even More In That Direction. My First Couple Of Listen's, I Wasn't That Into It. But After About The Fourth Time I Heard It I Really Started To Appreciate It. Overall A Very Good Disc And It's One Of Those That Get's Better With Every Listen.

FROM: Richard Paul Mondor 
For great mixes of emotions buy this I really love John Prine's music. Aimless Love's title track is the best on the c.d. I also enjoy Unwed Fathers. John Prine has a way of making you think about the way we all treat other people.
 
FROM: slinkyman
Simply Wonderful, Aimless Love is perfectly crafted in simplicity. Prine's successfulness in analyzing relationships and social issues while maintaining a conversational tone without any of the arrogance that tragically inhabits many pretentious songwriters works is remarkable. There is no call for grandiose verbalism when speaking commonly of common matters. The beauty of the album comes from descript lines such as "But youth is a costume And the beauty within lies unfurled" from "The Oldest Baby in the World", a tale of aging - gracefully or otherwise. The other main compliment to the album is how well it plays from beginning to end as a seamless work. Each song is supported upon the delicacy of those that preceded and follow. To put it all simply - this is a very good album and not even his best.

FROM: Jimbo
RATING: IT WAS OKAY
This may be Prine's most disappointing album. I love "The Bottomless Lake" and "Be My Friend Tonight," but I'm used to Prine albums where virtually every single song is great and , in this album, that just isn't the case. The title song could've been real good, but I think the arrangement is all wrong - it should have been done with just a couple of acoustic guitars. "The Oldest Baby" is a great tune but again, I think a different arrangement (more like on "JP Live") would have worked better. I play all my Prine CD's a lot, but I play this one the least.

Join the Official John Prine/Oh Boy Records Mailing List!
John Prine dot Net Welcome to the John Prine Shrine - The online John Prine Fan Club - jpshrine.orgOh Boy Records - Company of John Prine

©1996-2016 John Prine Shrine