When John Prine died of COVID two years ago this month, I was hit with immediate grief at the sudden passing of an extraordinary artist -- not to mention an unusually likable one -- followed by a perhaps more selfish thought: from now until forever, there would be no new Prine songs to look forward to.

True enough, of course, but I failed to anticipate that while Prine himself would no longer be around, his sound, or at least approximations of it, would live on in the work of younger artists. So far the most remarkable of them proves to be folksinger-songwriter Ian Noe, a product like Prine's parents of small-town Kentucky. Noe, who knew Prine not just as a voice on recordings, opened for him on Prine's last European tour in 2019, the same year Noe released his impressive debut disc, Between the Country. Nobody knew Prine had only months to live.

Though technically a more accomplished singer than Prine, Noe has much of the distinctive twangy phrasing. He also shares Prine's talent for solid, memorable melodies, to which his stories of ordinary people are set. On his early albums (from which model Noe draws most audibly) Prine sang of the kind of people he grew up with in Maywood, Illinois, a blue-collar suburb of Chicago populated in good part by migrants from Kentucky and surrounding states, with a culture that might be described broadly (if not always with precise geographical accuracy) as "Appalachian." These were no longer rural Southern folk, but they had rural Southern memories and held fiercely to them.

As one would not expect, the younger Noe (born in 1990) deals in characters still living in the places that Prine's moved out of generations ago. The people in River Fools & Mountain Saints, all struggling in their various ways, tend to be eccentric more than tragic. Noe forms them into interestingly realized and recognizable human beings. Perhaps what separates them from the rest of us is their intense historical connection to the mountain landscape, not to mention the generational poverty, that surrounds and defines them. Mostly, Noe manages to treat his fellow Kentuckians affectionately, even appreciatively, without ever lathering them in sentimentality. I suppose that's one reason there is not a single second-rate song on the album.

Then there's "Burning Down the Prairie," which doesn't resemble anything else here. On hearing it the first time, I was reminded vaguely of the grim 19th-century Western ballad "The Buffalo Skinners," though the thumping rhythm of "Burning" does not much resemble the doleful melody of "Skinners." Still, I detect a shared spirit. Perhaps as much Cormac McCarthy as folk narrative, it's tied to vivid yet elusive lyrics that clearly tell an unsettling story, one that while demanding our attention doesn't readily offer up its meaning.

Maybe if you removed every other verse from "Skinners," leaving those missing threads for the listener's imagination to fill in, you might get something like "Burning Down the Prairie." I don't know. I do know, on the other hand, that it's the most exhilarating new song I've heard so far in 2022. And what if Noe is only getting started?

[ visit Ian Noe's website ]