Prince - Art Official Age/Plectrumelectrum (Album Review)
Tuesday, 30 September 2014
Written by Huw Baines
Of all the problems faced by musicians, a seemingly endless supply of creativity is rarely one of them. But, as Prince returns with albums 33 and 34 in one of pop’s greatest careers, the issue is set for a dance in the spotlight.
‘Art Official Age’, a solo record, and ‘Plectrumelectrum’, his long-teased collaboration with 3rdEyeGirl, have been unveiled together, binding them ‘Use Your Illusion’-style even if they are stylistically divergent from minute one. Their one main point of comparison is that too often their best moves are shunted from the floor by two or three middling ones. It’s not a case of too much too soon as much as a case of too much all the time.
‘Art Official Age’ is the more expansive of the two and representative of its creator’s ceaseless inventive streak. Art Official Cage, the opener, leaps from Euro-pop nonsense to percussive funk and, most satisfyingly, guitar freak out in the space of three and a bit minutes, but never actually delivers anything of real substance.
It’s an inauspicious start to an album worth persevering with and, to compound it, a tonal red herring. Elsewhere, leaving aside dead ends in The Gold Standard and Breakfast Can Wait, there's plenty to get swept up in.
In U Know, Prince has cut a thoroughly modern downtempo R&B gem, while Clouds’ popping bass and luxurious keys are immediately rewarding. Breakdown is an absolute knockout, a ballad to remind anyone just how good the man is at laying it on thick. Where its opening salvo was all technical bluster and no backbone, there’s gold scattered elsewhere.
‘Plectrumelectrum’ is more immediately gratifying, but perhaps less likely to stick with you. Channelling more of the ferocious live energy exhibited with their Hit and Run shows, Prince and 3rdEyeGirl are a mighty proposition when locked in, but their tightly-wound power dissipates over the course of a few wrong turns.
In the plus column, Wow’s riff is an immediate, powerful hook, Whitecaps brims with pop smarts, Fixurlifeup bursts into life in a flurry of chugging chords and Marz fizzes from a rollicking rock ‘n’ roll base. Like ‘Art Official Age’, though, the other side of the coin is less pretty. Pretzelbodylogic lumbers where it should strike fast and get out, while Stopthistrain is a simpering pop-reggae mess that will raise hackles for anyone still suffering the effects of Magic’s recent stay at the top of the pop charts.
Common sense would suggest that, when confronted with 25 songs of varying quality across two records, one great album could be hewn from the raw materials. Here, though, that’s not exactly true. ‘Art Official Age’ and ‘Plectrumelectrum’ are from different ends of the Prince spectrum and products of this particular phase in the funky one’s odyssey. Probably best to leave him to it and forgive the odd miss among the hits.
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