Folk-rocker William Prince has never been more on the move and never sounded more at home. After albums exploring faith and gratitude, he takes a look at change and distance on Further From the Country. While not a concept album, the record offers a steady look at some big questions about where we come from and where we’re headed, the mix of happy ties and itchy restraints that maintain our connections to places, even if sometimes only emotionally. Prince’s mix of character studies and thoughtful meditations combines for an album with staying power.
The core of the record appears on its titular opening track. Above a driving beat and a sharp fiddle, Prince sings of his move to the big city, indicative of his success as a storytelling artist. The transition isn’t uncomplicated. He asks, “And if I go, is the home that raised me no longer my own? / And if I stay, would I leave here anyway?” He knows the value of leaving on, but also the cost of leaving something behind. It’s a price worth paying, though, as he acknowledges in “Damn” that “Things won’t change until I finally get the will to do something else with myself.” Prince feels the need to move to avoid getting stuck.
The sedentary pitfall comes through clearly on the melancholy country number “All the Same”, in which life drones by on the reservation; the same friends, the same squabbles, the same suicidal exits. Prince captures the unacknowledged desperation when he sings of a friendly woman who was “saving all her money for a holiday that would never come”. That sort of sharp detail fills Further From the Country. Prince gives his characters complexity with just a few lines.
On the pure Nashville “Flowers on the Dash”, he captures the entirety of the relationship in the chorus, a man’s trip to win back a lover turned to nothing but a rejected bouquet for the drive home. Southern rocker “On Rolls the Wheel” develops the sadness of a truck driver, while “For the First Time” sums up blue-collar struggle in a quick couplet: “Feels like God don’t give a damn / When you’re waking up at 4 a.m.”
With all this motion and worry about getting stuck, William Prince could easily, like his fictional truck driver, get lost on the road. Instead, he pauses to find his moments of growth and places of stability. “For the First Time” looks at the process of moving through and beyond grief’s immediacy. Prince especially considers the loss of his father (an integral figure throughout these songs), whom he addresses explicitly on “The Charmer.” On this track, he takes the shine off and tries to give an honest portrait of a complex man. Prince sees him clearly, and honors him appropriately: “Now every chorus, every verse / The charmer rides again.”
By the time Further From the Country reaches “The Charmer”, Prince’s musical tradition becomes a little clearer. He’s always drawn on folk, country, and rock. On one hand, it makes sense to find him as an offshoot of outlaw country. He might be a more natural successor to John Prine, with his particular sense of character and choice of people to study. It doesn’t hurt that “The Charmer’s” melody would sit perfectly on Prine’s The Missing Years. Prince uses his varied influence to paint careful pictures of regular life, while thinking deeply about what it means and how he’s made a life.
That life, throughout much of Further From the Country, has a sense of restlessness, but William Prince draws a critical point in the closer “More of the Same”. Unlike in “All the Same,” the singer now finds repetition not damaging, but edifying. He’s found love, and he can work on lessening his anxiety and need to compare himself with others. “How could I complain / With more of the same?” he sings.
Through both his peregrinations and his examinations, Prince has reached important conclusions. He might not have all the answers, but he’s starting to see how leaving can be part of finding home. He might be rolling on, further from where he began, but it sounds like he’s always been moving toward the center.