Album reviews: Prince: Art Official Age | 3rdEyeGirl
Prince: Art Official Age
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3rdEyeGirl: Plectrum Electrum
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Now, having resolved his beef with old label Warners, recovered the master tapes of some of his classic early 80s albums and re-signed to the label, he has released two albums simultaneously, one solo and one with 3rdEyeGirl. But maybe hold that sigh of relief.
This is a patchy double act, brought to you with an overabundance of upper case lettering and, in the case of PlectrumElectrum, an aversion to the space bar. Art Official Age is a pretty slick continuous concept suite in which Prince wakes up 45 years in the future. But it is not up to par with, say, Janelle Monae’s Prince-indebted The ArchAndroid. Student has trumped teacher.
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Hide AdTrying on a succession of studio styles for size, opening track Art Official Cage sounds like a bad disco novelty record, before giving way to the leaner groove of Clouds, overwrought slow jam Breakdown and the standard funky electro of The Gold Standard.
Breakfast Can Wait is a witty euphemistic come-on which shows that this Jehovah’s Witness can still make entertaining sex music. However, the rueful Time suggests the love life is not going quite to plan; he seeks solace in the cod conceptual ambient soul of Affirmation III when what he really needs to do is parlay the tantalising, electrifying glam intro to Funknroll into a satisfying freakout.
If Art Official Age is his studio “experiment”, PlectrumElectrum, recorded live with 3rdEyeGirl, is more straightforward, consistent and ultimately underwhelming in execution. The title track is a serviceable heavy blues rock jam with moments of molten riffola. Elsewhere, he often cedes vocal duties to the girls and there are some half-baked genre numbers, including lame quasi-reggae track Stopthistrain, the snotty electro punk of Marz and dalliances with floaty 70s-style MOR on Whitecaps and Tictactoe.
He pays tribute to his group on Fixurlifeup with the feminist view that “a girl with a guitar is 12 times better than another crazy band o boys”. Certainly, 3rdEyeGirl deliver an alternative, more robust and party-hard version of Funknroll to round off the album but they and their frontman never quite rip it up the way we know they can.