Musicology reviews in UK newspapers

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Thread started 04/15/04 11:29pm

sdbm

Musicology reviews in UK newspapers

Musicology has been reviewed by most of the UK broadsheet (i.e. quality) press. Copied below. Also copied below is a feature on Prince from the Independent.....

sdbm

Prince, Musicology
Alexis Petridis
Friday April 16, 2004
The Guardian

Four stars out of five

Prince is an artist that people desperately want to be good. Someone, somewhere will always suggest that his latest offering is a return to mid-80s form, even if, as in recent years, his latest offering is a jazz concept album about the Jehovah's Witnesses. This time, however, even Prince seems convinced he is back in shape. The opening track ends with snippets of his old hits, while titles such as Life O' The Party offer bullish echoes of his glory years.
At its best, Musicology has music to match his confidence: taut funk tracks and the lushly crafted pop of Cinnamon Girl and A Million Days, the latter frankly the best song Prince has written in 10 years. It wobbles towards the end, with Dear Mr Man, which unveils Prince's jaw-dropping anti-Bush political strategy - don't bother voting, write a letter of complaint instead - but Musicology strongly suggests Prince has finally roused himself from a decade-long self-indulgent torpor.

Album: Prince
Musicology, Sony/NPG
By Andy Gill
16 April 2004
The Independent

Two stars out of five

He's back, back, back! And, well, he hasn't changed a bit. Not one iota. Except that, for this Sony debut, Prince has mercifully managed to restrict his outpourings to a single album, rather than the deluge of repetitive double and triple albums that in effect killed off his appeal. He's still banging on about sex, whether proclaiming marital devotion in "Call My Name", warning a friend about his unfaithful lover in "The Marrying Kind" or playing the predatory wolf in "If Eye Was the Man in Ur Life", making his play for a woman by disparaging "that trifling barracuda" boyfriend who's cheating on her. But it all sounds past its sell-by date - as might be expected of an album whose touchstones are mostly Seventies funk from the likes of James Brown and The Meters. The title track, for instance, is proceeding happily enough in skeletal Meters manner until he adds some horrid riffs on a keyboard whose settings sound unchanged since 1982. But the most disappointing aspect of the album is the witlessness of his "political" pronouncements, especially in "Dear Mr Man", where he opines that there "ain't no sense in voting". Can he really be so dense that he can't tell the difference between the Clinton and Bush programmes, or is he too insulated from their effects?

A sign o' the old times from Prince
By David Sinclair
The Times

Three stars out of five

SINCE losing his way in the corporate jungle sometime in the 1990s, Prince has arrived at a tumultuous juncture of his life. He has divorced, remarried, lost both his parents and become an active member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, all in the past four years. At the age of 45, he is a mid-life crisis on high heels.
The last album he formally released in this country, Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, in 1999, sold a mere 5,000 copies, since when he has conducted his business through the internet. But on Monday he rejoins the race when Musicology becomes his first album on a major label for five years. Yet his music remains stuck inside a familiar comfort zone that he clearly has no intention of abandoning at this stage of the game.

Bearing the time-honoured legend “Produced, arranged, composed and per4med by Prince”, Musicology is a sleek, groove-rich experience governed for long stretches by the 11th commandment: Thou shalt not forget to party.

The opening two tracks — Musicology and Illusion, Coma, Pimp & Circumstance — set the tone with their sparse funk rhythms, high-maintenance vocal harmonies and abrupt horn-section punctuations: “Let’s groove, September/ Earth, Wind and Fire/ Hot pants by James/ Sly’s gonna take you higher.” It’s a blast, albeit an unapologetically nostalgic blast.

There are references in several songs to how much better things used to be “back in the day” and little reminders of his old hits — If I Was Your Girlfriend, Kiss, Sign o’ the Times — sneak in surreptitiously, as if being tuned in on an old radio between the tracks.

The ballads are similarly moulded to the highest of standards while sticking to the most reliable of formats. On the Couch finds him in falsetto mode pleading for a bit of nookie with a succession of outrageous chat-up lines: “It’s undignified to sleep alone”, indeed.

Elsewhere he does attempt to provide a more pertinent commentary on the goings-on in the world and his current preoccupations. Cinnamon Girl, the only rock track, looks at the social fallout from the 9/11 atrocities. But talk of a “big ol’ hole in the ozone” in Dear Mr Man sounds a little dated for a current-affairs commentary.

The album is being heralded as something of a new beginning for the star who dominated the 1980s more than any other. And it certainly finds Prince making a more considered effort than he has for many years to woo the mass audience. But like other artists who have bequeathed a similarly influential legacy — David Bowie, Van Morrison, the Rolling Stones — Prince doesn’t really have anything particularly new or startling to add to the musical story.

The Independent also has a feature on Prince....

Purple reign
He was once the biggest pop star in the world, bar, perhaps, Michael Jackson. On the eve of his new album release, Chris Mugan wonders if Prince can be king again
16 April 2004
The Independent

February's Grammy awards were dominated by a young generation of stars, such as Outkast, Coldplay and The White Stripes. But the show was stolen by a figure who had not been in the charts for years. It was Prince who hit the headlines, opening the ceremony in a sensational duet with Beyoncé that took in his classics "Purple Rain" and "Let's Go Crazy", as well as the diva's hit "Crazy in Love". The performance appeared to be a bid to have His Purpleness inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame, an event that duly occurred last month. But it was also a bittersweet reminder of a time when the dimunitive musician was a colossus on the musical landscape, a seemingly effortless, immense and maverick talent.

So why has Prince chosen now to re-emerge from the shadows, after spending much of the past decade holed up in his Paisley Park studio complex? Can it be that, with the release of his new album, Musicology, the man who at one time painted "slave" on his face to protest at major-label ways has once again embraced the music industry? Just what has it taken for Sony to entice him back into the corporate fold; and what does it portend for the online empire that has of late been his principal means of communication with his fan-base? And, perhaps most crucially, is Prince about to regain the dizzying heights of his glory years?

The Grammys appearance was, it seems, just one of the steps in his rehabilitation. In recent weeks, Prince has embarked on a tour, ditching the elongated jazz-fusion jams of previous outings for a run through the hits that made his name. "Purple Rain" and "Little Red Corvette" have been dusted down and sound as fresh as ever. "School was in session," raved the Indianapolis Star, praising a bravura acoustic segment that sounded more Delta blues than R&B. The Des Moines Register saw the artist "reclaim his royal sparkle" in Ames, Iowa, when he covered "Crazy in Love" and Outkast's "The Way You Move". His Los Angeles date was broadcast live to cinemas in 43 US cities.

Rolling Stone was there to note that the LA show opened with a video history of Prince's career. Perhaps the 45-year-old star of the show was trumpeting his own feelings of vindication, but he was also looking back. The Rolling Stone critic went on to say that Prince delivered a "two-hour-plus history lesson on both his rich body of music and the history of American music". His relevance was beyond doubt - shown by the way he could cover tracks made for the young generation that monopolised this year's Grammys. They have all grown up in Prince's shadow and, in many ways, are following in his footsteps. That is not a new phenomenon, as you can trace his influence in Macy Gray and Beck's Midnight Vultures, but nowadays it is all-pervasive. On "Hey Ya", Outkast's Andre 3000 is a carbon copy of Prince, while N*E*R*D's funk-rock hybrid builds on Prince's genre-defying work. In the UK, our very own Basement Jaxx fly the flag for his wilful eclecticism.

It has been well over a decade since a Prince album has been as fêted as Musicology, though you have to wonder how much of the noise is down to the record itself and how much is relief that the diminutive icon can remind us of his genius. Judging by present form, it is unlikely Prince will write another masterpiece. "Musicology" (the song) is decent enough, but hardly an equal to "Sign O' the Times" or "1999". Musicology's title track is as taut a piece of funk as you will hear this side of the Millennium, but there is none of the intensity of "Kiss" or the drama of "Nothing Compares 2 U". The intriguing "What Do U Want Me 2 Do" sounds more like west London's jazzy broken beats scene than US R&B, but, apart from that, Musicology is sonically conservative.

Prince is no longer breaking new ground, as he did throughout the Eighties; or displaying the audacity of "When Doves Cry", a song played entirely on one chord. It is refreshing, though, to hear Prince sound focused across a concise 12 tracks, after a series of releases in the Nineties that were either flabby, running to three discs, or just plain bizarre, like the 2001 jazz-funk paean to his Jehovah's Witness beliefs, Rainbow Children.

There are only fleeting moments that remind us of when Prince Rogers Nelson was one of the few artists that could hold a torch to Sly And The Family Stone or Funkadelic, perhaps the only figure once Michael Jackson had released Bad. Like Jimi Hendrix, Prince looked like he could have come from another, free-loving planet. The iconic artist used the peacock posturing of the decade to portray a sexuality that veered away from macho norms. He surrounded himself with like-minded people. The image of his kaleidoscopic backing band, The Revolution, was almost as strong as his own. He transcended genre and race boundaries, especially by breaking through to a mainstream audience on MTV. Even more precious was the creative control he demanded when he signed to Warner Bros in 1978, unprecedented for any black solo artist since Stevie Wonder.

Prince's artistic decline was shadowed by personal tragedy and eccentricity that bordered on serious mental problems. Even at the height of his powers, he was hugely secretive, spurning interviews in favour of sanctuary in his Paisley Park recording studios. Then, such idiosyncratic behaviour was an excused adjunct to his unquestioned brilliance. Only when his records began to lose their edge did the eccentricity overshadow the music. Graffiti Bridge was a poor sequel to Purple Rain, and the exquisite Diamonds and Pearls, with its hits "Cream" and "Gett Off", was barely balanced by Symbol.

Prince disowned his name in favour of the symbol, something more easily transcribed as TAFKAP - the artist formerly known as Prince. This was only a precursor to the war of attrition that accompanied the souring of the relationship with his record label. He wanted out of a contract that had shackled him in gilt-edged handcuffs, but the record company refused to budge, continuing to demand its one-record-a-year pound of flesh. Prince released an lacklustre succession of records and compilations to appease Warners, but got more attention for appearing in public with "slave" daubed on his face. He finally cut loose in 1996 to set up his own label, though his first release was the three-disc, three-hour behemoth, Emancipation.

With freedom, Prince was able to pander to the strangest of whims, surrounded by acolytes and yes-men in his Minneapolis fortress. He was one of the first artists to take advantage of the internet to form a direct relationship with the public, though he used NPG Music Club to put out releases of interest only to his hardcore fan-base. That same year, his then wife, Mayte Garcia-Nelson, gave birth to a son; rumours soon began to circulate that the baby had died shortly afterwards. No word came from Prince himself, though it did not take long for his home city newspaper, the Star Tribune to discover the death certificate of a "Boy Gregory" that it traced it back to Mayte. The baby had died from the rare skull disorder, Pfeiffer's syndrome.

While emerging to promote Emancipation, Prince refused to acknowledge his personal loss. A month after his son's birth he appeared on Oprah and said, "It's all good. Never mind what you hear." That week the album was released, with a track that sampled his child's heartbeat from an ultrasound scan, while a pregnant Mayte appeared in the video for "Betcha by Golly Wow". Prince was not to speak openly again until the new millennium gave him a chance to start afresh. At the end of 1999, his publishing contract with Warner Chappell finished and the symbol could regain his name.

He still needed to rebuild his personal life, though, a matter that took on some urgency with the deaths of his mother and father within months of each other. Prince found stability through remarriage and religion. Spirituality had always been as important as sex to Prince's oeuvre, but it soon took much more importance. One of his mother's dying wishes was that he would convert to her faith, the Jehovah's Witnesses, which he duly did in 2001.

Throughout this time, one Manuela Testolini had been working at Paisley Park, and was rumoured to have become close to Prince after Mayte had annulled their marriage the year before. The couple married on New Year's Eve 2001, and were baptised together the next year. Reports then began emerging from Minneapolis of residents opening their doors to greet a familiar, sharp-suited figure who wanted to talk to them about Jesus.

Last year, Prince released, via NPG Music Club, the album N.E.W.S - four instrumental tracks, "North", "South", "East" and "West", each of which came in at 14 uninvolving minutes. Under-standably, then, Sony, the label that is putting out Musicology, is sitting on the fence. Having released a handful of records via EMI and Arista, Prince has now hooked up with another major in a deal shrouded in secrecy. It appears to be a one-off - Sony is to manufacture and distribute the album. Rumours abound, though, that the label has an option on further releases. Prince is keeping it at arms length: he recorded the album himself before allowing the label to promote the product. And he can sell the album to fans on his NPG Music Club.

While his best work sounded classic and contemporary at the same time, Musicology looks back rather than forward. On the title track, he is happier dancing to Earth, Wind and Fire and Sly rather than any contemporary sounds. The album is actually close in spirit to several of his Nineties releases, especially 1998's New Power Soul. Both albums were recorded mainly by Prince alone - he is a master of drums, piano and guitar - and sound rather retro.

So Prince is at a point where he is happy taking stock of his musical legacy, and creating music that befits a man settling down into middle age. One note of caution: as Sony says, Prince "continues to confound audiences".

July	Reply to 'Musicology reviews in UK newspapers' The Guardian really liked the album. The Independent did not. The Independent newspaper really went after him. Wow. uk yay and nay edit [This message was edited Fri Apr 16 3:07:37 2004 by July]
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