The Houston Chronicle

August 22, 1999, Sunday 2 STAR EDITION

SECTION: ZEST; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 162 words

HEADLINE: RECORDINGS

SOURCE: Staff

BYLINE: BRUCE WESTBROOK




The Vault . . . Old Friends 4 Sale Prince Warner Bros.



Years ago, the Monty Python troupe issued a comedy disc with the amusingly literal title Contractual Obligation Album. Prince could have called this the same thing. This disc ends his 22-year association with Warner.



He's billed here as Prince because the first of these 10 tracks originated when "the Artist" used that name. They date from 1985-96, and except for She Spoke 2 Me, which had a shorter version on the Girl 6 soundtrack, they're previously unreleased.



But this is no Tracks, Bruce Springsteen's album of 66 unearthed gems. It's more a matter of leftovers, as Prince performs jazzy jams for meager material which he also composed, arranged and produced.



The Rest of My Life is a buoyant ditty; 5 Women is lush, punchy, brassy blues; and There Is Lonely has silky-smooth soulfulness with some Claptonesque guitar. But mostly this thin material won't make you party like it's 1999.



2 stars

---

The Guardian (London)
August 20, 1999

SECTION: Guardian Friday Pages; Pg. 17

LENGTH: 430 words

HEADLINE: Lost in music; What became of the talent formerly known as Prince? Adam Sweeting recalls his former glories



Prince The Vault. . . Old Friends 4 Sale Warner Bros ***



Remember when a Prince album was still an event? You'll have to cast your mind back a few years, to a time before he started changing his name and becoming preoccupied with the corporate machinations of the record industry than with making music.



The material gathered on The Vault is at least partially from the Marvellous Midget's heyday, since it begins at the start of 1985 (after Purple Rain) and runs through to the dodgier dateline of mid-1995, when Prince had turned into a funny symbol and was releasing the Beautiful Experience EP. But dates notwithstanding, the 10 tracks here present a different side of Prince from the one he chose to expose to public view.



The album was, apparently, 'originally intended for private use only' and often the mood is more like the atmosphere of one of his celebrated post-concert jam sessions than of whatever image-makeover he happened to be promoting at the time. Here, Prince avoids the frequently distressing forays into hip-hop and rap which disfig ured many of his later discs, opting instead to stick to the musical roots you sense he always felt happier with soul, funk, R&B and some brief flirtations with modern jazz, notably in the intricate extended guitar soloing of She Spoke 2 Me.



The music was recorded in studios as far-flung as Paris, Tokyo and Los Angeles, with Prince leading a shifting cast of musicians rather than a fixed band, though familiar names like Sheila E and Levi Seacer crop up.



The recording quality is strikingly clean and resonant, leaving bags of space for a barrage of superior contributions on almost any instrument that can be blown, plucked or thwacked. When The Lights Go Down is a slinky, languid exercise in small-hours funk, coloured with splashes of cocktail-jazz piano, tablas and slithery guitar. In Old Friends For Sale, Prince drags a coarse rasp from his voice to fit the luxurious bluesiness of the Gil Evansesque orchestral arrangement. He's back in bluesland on 5 Women, featuring some stinging guitar which might have been nicked from B B King's The Thrill Is Gone.



Prince sounds delighted to be singing about his favourite subject: sex, and loads of it. He has another stab at it in Sarah, a whippy slice of funkiness dripping with rampant libido, and the closest thing to vintage prime-time Prince on offer. These are terrific performances of several powerful tracks, but collectively The Vault sounds like a bunch of oddments. Mostly, it's a reminder of a huge talent which mysteriously went awol.

---

The Gazette (Montreal)

August 19, 1999, FINAL

SECTION: Entertainment: The New Music; D4

LENGTH: 279 words

HEADLINE: Old Prince out-takes open The Vault

BYLINE: JORDAN ZIVITZ




In Stores



- Taking time out from litigation against unofficial Web sites and fanzines devoted to his life's work, the rampant ego formerly known as Prince has prepared The Vault: Old Friends 4 Sale, expected in stores next week.



With a new album in stores what seems like every other month, you'd think that Prince's vault would be sucked clean of everything but its paisley wallpaper. But Warner Bros., Prince's former label, has scraped together 40 minutes of out-takes recorded between 1985 and 1994.



Since the tracks on The Vault are taken from his heyday, there's a rather tenuous justification for Prince's presumably temporary reversion to his royal appellation; only in the final years represented by The Vault did the diminutive funk idol begin his string of name changes that ranged from quizzical to laughable.

---

Louis Post-Dispatch

August 15, 1999, Sunday, FIVE STAR LIFT EDITION

SECTION: A&E, Pg. D4

LENGTH: 1265 words

HEADLINE: PRINCE RECYCLES; GBV SOARS

BYLINE: Kevin C. Johnson, Brian Q. Newcomb, Tom Moon, Knight Ridder



"The Vault...Old Friends 4 Sale"



Prince/Warner Bros. Records

It's been tough times for Prince fans the last few years as the singer released album after album of inferior material. Add "The Vault ... Old Friends 4 Sale" to that list.



To Prince's credit, this isn't something he released himself. Instead, it comes from his old record label, Warner Bros., which is releasing it Aug. 24 as part of their agreement when he left the label under bad terms. Sometimes there's good reason why songs go unreleased, and "The Vault ... Old Friends 4 Sale" proves this. Most of these songs were recorded from 1985-1994, which explains why the music is more disjointed than usual. The songs miss more than hit. "My Little Pill" is an obvious outtake, a smaller part of some bigger picture. "It's About the Walk" could be a leftover from Prince's highly uneven "Parade" CD, while the boring blues of "5 Women" is a yawn. The one standout track is the single "Extraordinary," a classic ballad in the same groove of his "Scandalous."



-- Kevin C. Johnson