American sights and sounds are fed through a compassionate lens. Straight-up melodies are filled-in and skewed by surprises like farfisa, sitar and strings, as Prophet turns the dusties and undesirables into shiny jewels. Stories of little criminals unknown legends and waste-cases (and sometimes all three, as in "I Bow Down and Pray to Every Woman I See") are firefly-electric in their naturalness. Combine that with a dirty rock & roll vocal and that whalloping guitar, and you've got an undeniably American mix of stuff that's easily digested but still dangerous. Like donuts -- the subject of the album's opening salvo -- what's not to like?

DENISE SULLIVAN
(June 18, 2002)

(DENISE SULLIVAN)