Consumer Guide Album

John Prine: In Spite of Ourselves [Oh Boy, 1999]
After two years of cancer treatments underwritten by George Strait's version of a throwaway written with Roger "I'd Like To Teach the World To Sing" Cook, the cheating songs and Nashville novelties on this duet album are a perfect way for Prine to keep his hand in until his muse feels as glad to be alive as he does. Every one of his helpmates--not just Trisha Yearwood and Emmylou Harris and Dolores Keane and Lucinda Williams, but creaky old Connie Smith and Melba Montgomery, and also feisty young Fiona Prine--pretties up his soundscape. But the costar is Iris DeMent, who kills on both the Bobby Braddock cornpone of "(We're Not) The Jet Set" (rhymes with "Chevro-let set") and the conflicted spouse-swapping of the impossible old George & Melba hit "Let's Invite Them Over"--as well as Prine's only new copyright, the title track, in which a husband and wife who love each other to death paint totally different pictures of their marriage. A