Night Surfer
Chuck Prophet’s 13th solo album deserves to be the album that raises his profile as high as any durable classic rocker. An underrated guitarist who can play rings around his competition, Prophet focuses on singer/songwriter music as his method of communication. His previous album—2012’s *Temple Beautiful*—was a tour of San Francisco from the sharpest guide on land. *Night Surfer* now looks deeper into the psychology that makes living in the city unique. Songs such as “Countrified Inner City Technological Man,” “Guilty as a Saint,” “Ford Econoline,” and “Truth Will Out (Ballad of Melissa and Remy)” take various paths to pathos. Prophet is a music veteran, a songwriter’s songwriter, and a musician’s musician, having been one of the earliest movers in the alt-country scene. He can toss off a line like “The river of life changes course every morning” from “Laughing on the Inside” with the authority of a master. And he’s humble enough to ingratiate himself on “Wish Me Luck,” where he offers, “My life is an experiment/That doesn’t prove a thing.”
There are a lot of little stories on Night Surfer. But they seem to add up to one big story. What that overarching story is, I am not really sure, but I’ll know it when it punches me in the face. It’s loosely conceptual but universal all the same, I’d contend. And of course, you’ll find it laced with humor and a persistent anxiety throughout. And while I had originally considered all this leaning toward the dystopian, now I wonder. The future might just save us. But we have to get there first. Night Surfer is all about a musical path forward, about looking around and imagining where we’ll be in 20 years if we just follow that path.
After his ambitious 2012 album Temple Beautiful, a song cycle about his home town of San Francisco, Chuck Prophet eases back just a bit with Night Surfer, a set of tunes that often have an autobiographical twist as Prophet (or a character speaking with his voice) interacts with a rogue's gallery of characters both honorable and dangerous.