"Hello, my name's Graham, and I'm a Prince fan" - Art Official Age by Prince

2014 has seen yet another of Prince’s sporadic re-engagements with the mainstream of pop culture – for the most part, as it was based on live performances more than recorded / released output, it has been pretty successful. The HIT & RUN shows across the UK and Europe this year (both small guerrilla type shows and larger arenas) with 3RD EYE GIRL garnered rave reviews from long standing fans, casual observers, bucket-listers & box-tickers alike.

I saw the show in Leeds, and it ranked pretty highly in my personal gig list. Yes there’s always a portion of the show where you need to indulge the more recent years of his back catalogue, but this was WAY outweighed by the opening salvo of LET’S GO CRAZY / TAKE ME WITH U / RASPBERRY BERET / U GOT THE LOOK / MUSICOLOGY / KISS, and totally obliterated by the WHEN DOVES CRY / SIGN O’ THE TIMES / ALPHABET STREET / HOT THING section. That’s a career for most people, and it was less than half of one gig…..

Rumours of a record with 3rd EYE GIRL were firmed up ages ago, so this live feast was, for me, tempered with the numbed awareness that I was going to have to face another album at some time or another, and so when it was announced that there would be TWO coming out, well, Mr Ambassador…..

See, whilst 2004’s MUSICOLOGY album was decent, it was ultimately a powder puff affair bolstered by a couple of highlights, 3121 similarly so; PLANET EARTH was broadly a lesson in dullness, the LOTUSFLOWER and MPLSSOUND records offered nothing of particular value and 2010’s….er, 2010 album I can’t really comment on as I never got to the end of it properly because what I did wade through was so resolutely ORDINARY. Or at least the good bits were, the rest was dire….. . I have sometimes felt the need to hear a circle of friendly like minded people say to me "Hello Graham. It's ok, you're with friends" when I try to tell people this guy is actually a genius.......

On record it seems that Prince has tried everything and yet found almost nothing in the last 20 years. Rejecting his past, embracing it, evoking old school funk and ‘real music by real musicians’ while desperately attempting to crowbar modern idioms into his work to embarrassing effect. At times he has sounded like an almost 44 year old man looks the few times he ventures to a nightclub……or so I am told.

And yet………

….we arrive at ART OFFICIAL AGE (he does love a rubbish play on words). I expected little as….I expected little, and yet…….it’s a good record. It’s a good PRINCE record, but it’s also just a good record. It’s much more than I expected, and for many more reasons and in many more ways than I expected. Caveat – there isn’t a single tune on here that should be allowed to share a toasted bagel with the songs I listed from the gig above, but there also isn’t a single tune resembling anything like the gratuitous turds-on-a-stick we’ve been poked with for so many years.

Key factor? Has to be the prominent role played by Josh Weldon, who shares much of the overall sleeve credits with Prince – this is significant as while individual contributions to tracks were always identified, Prince albums as a whole were always “Produced, Arranged, Composed and Performed by Prince” (bar the ones with The Revolution, though a significant proportion of tracks were still one man shows). This for me is the reason why, for the first time, there is actually a balance between the areas where Prince is surefooted and at his best, and the nods to more modern idioms. There’s a second pair of ears on here, and it’s all the better for it. I’m loathe to make the reckless suggestion that Prince has hauled his ego in, but on whatever basis he made the decision to follow this route, it was a good call. The songs are certainly his strongest set for many years, making it by far his most satisfying album of the years that begin with a 2. As indicated, there are no obvious classics but it’s almost revolutionary to not hear a clunking great dog of a song (or 4) dragging everything else into the mire. There is also a greater element of restraint and space – this is the least produced Prince album for a hell of a long time. Bombast, pomp, sheen are all in refreshingly short supply.

The semi-title track opens, and it’s an intriguing meld of old school clipped funk guitar and house/trance grooves. It’s a bit of a ‘chuck everything in and see’ affair, perhaps works despite itself or as an early palette cleanse to allow a clearer path for the rest of the record. CLOUDS meditates on technology and its varying influences on modern life over and wah-and-bass groove, with a weird spoken word outro to finish with. Highlights are the more sedate moments like BREAKDOWN, TIME (classic Prince bass line, economic but superb….) THIS COULD BE US and BREAKFAST CAN WAIT (which works much better here than it did in its standalone release earlier this year), and in the breezy WHAT IT FEELS LIKE. The dearth of perfunctory funk / r’n’b’ lite workouts is invigorating in itself. THE GOLD STANDARD and U KNOW are slightly less commanding but decent, and this album’s version of FUNKNROLL works much better in this stripped down incarnation than it does live or on the 3rd EYE GIRL record. Best Moment? WAY BACK HOME. The more I listen to this track, it might be allowed a small cream tea with some of the very best Prince tracks; vulnerable, atmospheric, brooding, and brought back as a coda to the album which is quite beautiful.

Just as an aside, the 3rd EYE GIRL record is jolly, sprightly, and quite fun in places. Take it for what it is and nothing more. ART OFFICIAL AGE is a proper record. It COULD be a watershed moment, and I’m now re-engaged and wondering where Prince might go next, what he does with this new foothold he has on my attention span. Prince has been pop music’s naughtiest boy and it’s Messiah in equal measure over his career, especially in his earlier years. Now, well, he’s not the Messiah, and yet he’s not quite as naughty a boy as he has been for the last 15 years or so…….