A Legitimately Magical Prince Album

In 2010, Prince released an album, called “20Ten,” that ushered in the longest silence of his thirty-five-year career as a recording artist. For most of Prince’s creative existence, he’s put out an album a year, sometimes double and triple sets. After “20Ten,” though, came nothing. Well, nothing by Prince’s standards: plenty of singles trickled out, along with rumors about upcoming projects, but there was no major release. Then, earlier this year, he announced a return to Warner Bros. records, at first for the purpose of assembling a thirtieth-anniversary edition of “Purple Rain,” which would include outtakes and rare demos. This has not yet materialized. What has emerged is his first album of new material since “20Ten,” and the second: this week, Prince resurfaces with “Art Official Age,” a solo album, and “PlectrumElectrum,” a long-delayed collaboration with his all-female backing group, 3rd Eye Girl.

“PlectrumElectrum” is easier to understand and easier to dispense with, which doesn’t mean that it’s subpar, exactly. It’s a short rock record with plenty of guitar, and includes meditations on sex, self-empowerment treatises, and energetic songs about energy. The more ambitious songs often spotlight someone other than Prince. Hannah Ford, the band’s drummer, sings the plaintive ballad “Whitecaps,” and “Boy Trouble” is a strange flower of a song with an out-of-left-field speed rap.

The so-called solo record, “Art Official Age,” is considerably more interesting. For starters, Prince has dispensed with his typical “Produced, Arranged, Composed, and Performed by Prince” credit, the one on which much of his mystique as a one-man band and all-around genius was founded, and has shared production credit with Joshua Welton, who also happens to be Hannah Ford’s husband. Was this an admission by Prince that he needed another pair of ears? Was he in search of a more contemporary sound? The quasi-title track that opens the album (“Art Official Cage”) seems to suggest so. It’s a strange welter of E.D.M. clichés and Europop, with some gnomic lyrics, some grinding guitar, and some rapping. It’s a mess, provocative but not exactly successful; it sounds like a track that was left off Prince’s 1989 “Batman” soundtrack, updated for 20Fourteen.

But the rest of the album is easily Prince’s most coherent and satisfying record in more than a decade. In the past few years, the Prince songs that leaked online seemed to be less about paving the way for a new album and more about trolling the Internet. “Breakfast Can Wait,” a lithe and light funk number, was released with a cover photo of Dave Chappelle as Prince. Only a snippet of “This Could Be Us” leaked, but it was enough to confirm that Prince had written a song about a popular Internet meme that used a picture of him from his “Purple Rain” days. As proper singles started appearing, though, the album came into sharper focus. Songs like “Clouds” and “U Know,” slower and more repetitive than the kaleidoscopic funk-rock we’ve come to expect from Prince, suggested a new direction—a kind of gelatinous, futuristic R. & B.

These tracks worked in concert with the other singles to sketch out a theme: that technology separates us from those we’re close to, and even from ourselves; and that the lack of integration may well result in disintegration. “Clouds,” the second track on the album, which opens with the sound of a radio tuning, critiques the way the computer age offloads experiences to distant servers (that’s what the clouds are); the song instead prioritizes romance and human connection (“You should never underestimate the power of a kiss on the neck when she doesn’t expect a kiss on the neck”). It also folds in a well-constructed argument about the way the Internet era has encouraged empty exhibition and a half-baked argument about violence and bullying, before ending with a sci-fi monologue delivered by a British female voice that seems to suggest that Prince has been placed in some sort of centuries-long suspended animation.

“Clouds” is a kind of manifesto: “When life’s a stage in this brand new age / How do we engage?” Prince’s answer is to do a version of what he’s always done, which is absorb nearly every kind of music available and, via alchemic wizardry, turn it into something that produces thoughts and emotions. That’s even more evident on “U Know,” which is built on a sample of the singer Mila J’s “Blinded” and alternates wordy half-rapped verses about romantic misunderstanding and spiritual crisis with an irresistibly seductive chorus. The songs seem like R. & B., but they’re statements of deep unrest. Then the album hits a lull, with tracks that declare the power of music rather than demonstrate it, and insist on the superiority of the past. It’s grumpy-old-man music, done with plenty of panache. None of this, though, is sufficient preparation for the homestretch of “Art Official Age,” which is where Prince stops worrying about the future or the past and truly inhabits the present. Beginning with “What It Feels Like,” a duet with the singer Andy Allo, Prince delivers a series of ballads, broken up by interludes and a red-meat dance song, that are like nothing he’s done before.

It’s worth thinking about what it means for Prince to step into new territory. He has spent years trying to recapture pieces of his old self: the provocateur in black lingerie who got booed as an opening act for the Rolling Stones, the New Wave-inflected keyboard freak of “1999,” the motorcycle-riding rock god who ruled the world after “Purple Rain,” the tortured psychedelic introvert of “Around the World in a Day,” the jazzy genius of “Parade,” the pop polymath of “Sign O the Times,” the deeply divided spiritual pilgrim of “Lovesexy.” These old selves then became albatrosses. His albums of the late nineties and the past decade found Prince making gestures toward those personas without ever really inhabiting them again. And how could he? Here, for the first time, he suggests an alternative: maybe there’s an entirely new Prince music, possibly aided and abetted by Joshua Welton, that harnesses his talents and his vision. Maybe he’s not condemned to auto-pastiche.

The closing songs are hard to absorb at first. “Way Back Home” sounds sluggish for a while and then, suddenly, it sounds revelatory. It’s a self-portrait painted in the strangest and most accurate colors imaginable, a melancholy confession and bruised boast in which Prince cops to the fact that he’s out of place, out of sorts, pushed forward at times by desperation but “born alive” in a world where most people are “born dead.” And “Time,” which runs for nearly seven minutes, is a love song, briefly lickerish, that’s mostly about the loneliness of the road. In both cases, Prince brings the tempo way down, focusses on the nuances of his melodies, shares the spotlight with female vocalists, weaves in motifs from earlier songs from the album, and adds a steady supply of surprising touches (such as the superbly funky, if subdued, horn outro to “Time”).

The ballads are broken up by “FunkNRoll,” a straightforwardly exciting party song that also appears on “PlectrumElectrum,” but the version here serves the album’s over-all message—it’s knotty, both playful and eerie, with sonar-like sound effects that create a sense of distance and mediation. The closing track, “Affirmation III,” is a haunting reprise of “Way Back Home.” And while it’s abstract (the clipped, angelic backing chorus, which seems to be on loan from Laurie Anderson, is even more prominent), it’s also concrete. For the first time in years, Prince seems not just carnal but corporeal. Way back on “Controversy,” he challenged categories: “Am I black or white? Am I straight or gay?” By the time of “I Would Die 4 U,” the challenge had turned to taunting: “I’m not a woman / I’m not a man / I am something you can never understand,” and then, messianically, “I’m not a human.” Here, he presents himself as something understandable and fully human. In “Breakfast Can Wait,” he pleads with his lover that she can’t “leave a black man in this state.” But that black man is in this state: he’s in his fifties, grappling with loneliness, aging, creative inspiration, self-doubt, a shifting cultural landscape, and love. As luck would have it, he’s also Prince.

Alt-J’s second album defies expectations

Spearheaded by their hit single “Breezeblocks,” Alt-J’s debut album An Awesome Wave initially had both fans and critics raving over the uniquely 21st-century sound cultivated by the four lads from Leeds. Eager to crown them the next big thing, many compared the four to a certain other group of introverted Englishmen who have also been playing music together since their school days. Back then, they went by the name On A Friday, but most people today know them as Radiohead. Sure, lead singer Joe Newman’s penchant for falsetto recalls post-The Bends Thom Yorke and both groups are influenced by trip hop/IDM acts like DJ Shadow, Massive Attack and Aphex Twin, but so was almost every major British rock musician who was coming up in the ’90s. Newman himself has said that he feels these comparisons and expectations are premature. He is quick to dispel them by citing Alt-J’s lone musical output in comparison to others’ long and consistent careers. Yet, for whatever reason, it feels like there is a disproportionate effort being made to contextualize Alt-J in relation to other bands and speculate on their longevity. This cacophony of hypercritical prophesizing has proven itself to be entirely superfluous to the music itself, mostly unsubstantiated and ultimately detrimental to new fans approaching Alt-J.

On the first album, the band’s experiments in non-English lyricism, apparent fixation on triangles (as evidenced by their name, which is a keyboard shortcut for ∆) and subtle references to the book Where the Wild Things Are and the film Léon: The Professional all served to form a unique aesthetic identity. Barely two years removed from their debut, though, it now seems that many of Alt-J’s idiosyncrasies have become gimmicks in the eyes of critics. For the most part, this is due to hipsters’ (read: Pitchfork’s) aversion to anything popular. As the group continues to convert more and more Mumford & Sons/Ed Sheeran-type listeners, it is simultaneously losing the respect of the bloggers and critics who champion the underground and undiscovered. Such an inverse relationship between record sales and underground critical acclaim is only heightened by the fact that they were awarded the Mercury Prize for Best British Album of 2012. Perhaps it is all of this pressure and denigration that led to the supposedly amicable departure of bassist Gwil Sainsbury (for an example of such wanton abuse, see The Guardian’s January article “Alt-J: what happens when a bland band loses an anonymous member?”). Considering all that has happened and all that has been predicted to happen to the band since their debut, there is a great deal riding on this sophomore effort. With This Is All Yours, the newly slimmed-down outfit delivered a lush set of tracks that surprises without straying too far from their formula.

This Is All Yours immediately harkens back to An Awesome Wave by starting with another “Intro.” It’s a slow-burning chorale done in classic Alt-J style — only this time on a grander scale. The staccato vocals of Newman and keyboardist Gus Unger-Hamilton slowly multiply into a grandiose chant in which each voice cycles through acting as the kick, snare or hi-hat of a syncopated drumbeat. This slowly builds up to a “drop” executed by the actual drums (and distinctive array of woodblocks, anvils, shakers, tambourines, etc.) of percussionist Thom Green. This song sets the tone for the rest of the album — many such climactic moments are to come.

Perhaps the most recognizable remnant of the first album is “Bloodflood, Pt. II.” The song takes lyrics from tracks such as “Fitzpleasure” and “Bloodflood” from their first album and lays them in a more fuller bed of horns and piano. New lyrics placed between resurfacings of old characters such as the Mandela Boys — a gang from Newman’s hometown of Southampton — add an additional dimension to their evolving story. Lyrically, Newman’s fondness of short, simple sentecnes and pithy observations is on display more than ever before.

Hardly a carbon copy, there are some refreshing departures from their established blueprint. In particular, the new album incorporates some distinctive feminine voices. Much has been made of the Miley Cyrus sample on “Hunger of the Pine,” which was released alongside the Black Keys-esque “Left Hand Free” a couple months before the album dropped in its entirety. After a few minutes of ambient build-up, the sampled line “I’m a female rebel” kicks in, sounding like it was taken directly out of James Blake’s repertoire. The most memorable female voice, however, occurs on the track “Warm Foothills,” perhaps the album’s crowning achievement. The track features English female folk singers Lianne La Havas and Marika Hackman, as well as Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst. Rather than giving each their own verse or chorus, the guests trade off every other word with Newman and Unger-Hamilton, creating a mesmerizing hocketing effect that recalls fellow indie rockers Dirty Projectors. It will be very interesting to see how they attempt to recreate this effect in a live setting.

“The Gospel of John Hurt” provides another high point. Midway through the elegiac sparsity, the straight 4/4 backbeat seamlessly morphs into a triplet-based 6/8 feel. Moments like this are sure to please the casual music fan as well as the discerning listener. The tracks “Arrival in Nara” and “Pusher,” however, will just as surely become fodder for critics to cite as evidence of the band’s blandness. They seem to have half of the formula: lush harmonies and dramatic swells, but no emphatic entrance of drums or bass. Both prove ultimately disappointing. Still, even when they disappoint, they do it in an interesting way. “Arrival in Nara” experiments with string arrangements, robot voices, bird sounds and a left-to-right panning fly buzz that will have those listening on headphones searching around the room for the source.

As an epilogue, the record has  a secret track: an astonishing cover of Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day.” Alt-J take Robert Glasper’s vocoder-infused interpretation further into the electronic realm; the original tune is almost unrecognizable beneath the wall of synths and bass — that is, until the triumphant chorus hits like a ton of bricks.

It’s hard to believe that a band like this could be considered bland, or that there would ever be an overabundance of “folk-step” bands, that is the state of the music industry today. It does make some sense, though. It seems like almost all pop music today falls into one of two categories: foot-stomping folk a la The Lumineers or bass-heavy dance music from DJ’s like Diplo and David Guetta. Alt-J is just one of few groups who have been placed somewhere in the middle. In light of this, This Is All Yours feels like an appropriate title. It is a recognition that they only have power over the music. After they put it out into the world, they can’t control others’ projections, extrapolations or comparisons. They’re not trying to be the new Gomez, the new James Blake or the new Radiohead. And this newfound autonomy comes through in the puzzlingly polarizing group’s impressive sophomore effort.