“Here’s a piece of my heart and soul…” Tommy Prine sings in the final words of his EP, Love Circle. By its fragile end, the silence swallowing gauzy keys and silken strings, the abbreviated project – a follow up to his lauded 2023 debut This Far South – has seen the singer-songwriter surrender so much of himself, with the EP’s closing elegy, “Mysteries of Man,” providing a moment of unguarded reflection.
This collection of six songs is an extension of the young Prine, a gentle, exposing, moody, desperate, desirous appendage, that he holds out to listeners unabashedly.
Without hesitation, he shines a light on unending devotion in the swirling and spacey “Purple Paint” and unquenchable gratitude for this life throughout the simplistic “Standing in the Middle.” He reaches into the darkness, as well, bringing to the surface the rich and wrenching “Caught in the Wake” and the pleading “Space,” two songs that depict all-consuming pain and the dulled nuances of grief.
