They say all political careers end in failure, but one wonders if all musical ones are destined to as well. Though rock music remains a relatively young medium, it is quite hard to identify artists who have continued releasing great music into their twilight years. There are, of course, innumerable examples of burn-out and bands who split before their time, but surveying those who have stayed the course, the record is patchy.
David Bowie released a comeback album to widespread acclaim last year, but even he spent nearly a decade in semi-retirement beforehand, and also endured a good ten years in the creative wilderness between the mid-’80s and mid-’90s. Leonard Cohen could be said to have had a similar career arc. Prince perhaps has a lot in common with The Rolling Stones, in that they are both recognised as being among the all-time greats, but who are nowadays celebrated more for brilliant live shows than releasing essential new music.
Always a prolific artist, Prince has heralded the latest chapter in his career with the release of two albums, Art Official Age and Plectrum Electrum, the former a solo effort, the latter created in collaboration with the all-female trio 3rdEyeGirl. Broadly speaking, Art Official Age is a collection of funk and soul tunes, whilst Plectrum Electrum finds Prince indulging his love of Hendrix-like guitar pyrotechnics.
It is notable that while Prince has gradually gone off the creative boil over the past 15 years or so, many of his best sonic tricks have been co-opted and tweaked by groove mechanics like Trent Reznor, James Murphy and The Neptunes. Indeed, if you play Art Official Age back back-to-back with, say, NIN’s ‘Into The Void’ or Neptunes efforts like ‘Good Stuff’ and ‘Signs’ (all indebted to Prince), Prince’s own album sounds alarmingly flat.
Reznor himself has stated that if, as mythology suggests, the singer has literally hundreds of unreleased tracks in the vaults of his Paisley Park studios in Minnesota, his latterday output is that of an artist whose quality control radar has malfunctioned to a chronic degree. The sci-fi themed Art Official Age, unfortunately, bears out the theory.
Songs like the title track, ‘Clouds’, ‘Way Back Home’ and ‘The Gold Standard’ (it isn’t) are decent slices of sex-fixated electro-funk, but contain nothing Prince hasn’t done before and to a much higher level. By some distance the most impressive moments are the more stylistically unusual tunes, such as the melancholy ballad ‘Breakdown’ and the moody soul workout ‘Time’.
Plectrum Electrum, meanwhile, continues Prince’s career-long tradition of overseeing records – apparently on a whim – by female acts, including Sheena Easton and Vanity 6 (for whom he wrote the classic ‘Nasty Girl’, which soundtracked a memorable scene in Beverly Hills Cop and still features in his setlists). The core style of the album is flamboyant power riffing, and there are a number of lengthy guitar solos which can be categorised as either “epic” or “ludicrously self-indulgent”.
Again, the record works best when Prince breaks with the formula and stretches his creative wings, particularly on ‘White Caps’, ‘Stop This Train’ and ‘Tictactoe’, all of which are gorgeous pieces of delicate dream-pop. Notably, Prince relinquishes vocal duties on all three songs and allows different members of 3rdEyeGirl to take centre stage.
Overall, though, as with Art Official Age, there is much huffing and puffing, but precious little of the magic that made albums like 1999, Purple Rain and Sign O’ The Times such classics. Whilst Prince will no doubt remain one of the finest live acts in the world, with this brace of records, he has again failed to arrest his recording decline.
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