Album Review: John Mellencamp - Plain Spoken

With his Midwestern tales of battlers and the beaten, it’s easy to paint Mellencamp a small-town Springsteen.

But 20-plus albums in, the pugnacious chronicler who started as the teen-appealing Johnny Cougar still surprises with personally revealing adult moments. Beyond being a Troubled Man, there’s Tears In Vain – a confessional of his divorce, albeit blaming his wife. That sits oddly against the empathetic Blue Charlotte, as a carer husband watches his partner slip away, and the album-closing Lawless Times – a howl at American society’s malaises. You never doubt the sincerity, if sometimes pondering the intent.