Farfunknugin said:

AOA is a much more cohesive album. Listen to it on headphones to pick up all the little nuances on there. Great return to form. PE's nothing more then a throwaway except for the 3 trax everyone cites.

You ain't lyin' about the headphones. I was kind of "eh, i'll listen to AOA as I get time" after hearing it throught my car for a few songs. Then I listened through headphones...major, major difference. the first time I used cans I think I listened to the entire cd 3 times straight. PE, on the other hand, is better heard just loud.

JoeTyler said:

Why must it always be "this" is better than "that," when really its more about one's aesthetic tastes. Clearly some people are feeling the rock vibe more than the funk/soul vibe, but true to Prince's form he interrupts and all but stops the rock vibe on PlecElect with "BoyTrouble" and doesn't return to the rock form until "Marz" so PlecElec, as much as I like it, is not truly a "rock" record no more than AOA is truly a funk or R&B record. They both are Prince records. I seem to like them both equally. With AOA I'm still getting use to the hip-hop style production, but that doesn't bother me as much as Hannah singing on far too many of the songs for my tastes, causing PlecElec to sound more like an associated artist album than a Prince album. But, with all of that said, PlecElec has some damn fine songs on it, especially "WOW" and "AnotherLove". I'm just glad that I've always loved Prince's diversity. It is what drew me to him. With Prince there are always so many sounds that each album ssems like a musical journey. Of course, some journeys move me more than others, but it's always a musical journey, and I'm just glad that AOA and PlecElec are combining for a wonderful ride.

I agree, AOA is the best in a very long time.

AOA blows PLECTRUM ELECTRUM away!!

I've fixed the headline..

Philly76 said:

PE is such a mediocre album with only a little few highlights. AoA is the best album since The Gold Experience.

Yes,

I only like 2 songs: Wow, and Anotherlove...

The rest is bad..

In my opinion (PLEASE NOTE I DON'T THINK IT'S A "FACT" OR THE "TRUTH")

AOA is the carefully put together sonic journey.

PLEL is the more carefully put together than usual semi-protégé project.

Both albums are a step up compared to Prince's usual modus operandi for both endeavors (solo and protégées), but just like back in the days, the "Prince" record is far more ambitious and rewarding. The 3rdeyegirl stuff is nothing to sneeze at, in my view it has a couple of memorable songs but can't compete in scope and achievement with the other release.

However I'm not surprised fans who are way more into rock prefer it to AOA -- takes all sorts to make our world, don't listen to auditory egomaniacs who think they possess the only pair of unbiased ears in the world and believe what they hear is what you should hear too.

Prince shows his inventive side on two new albums

Prince shows his inventive side on two new albums being released simultaneously. (New York Times)

Every few years, some new artist is venerated as the “new” Prince – Bruno Mars being the latest example – and every few years, that artist proves incapable of living up to such hype. Even Michael Jackson, for all of his success, pales in comparison to Prince, who is an extreme talent as an instrumentalist, producer, arranger, sonic provocateur and songwriter. In terms of sheer musical ability and command of the groove, Prince really has few, if any, living peers.

And yet, the guy can’t seem to catch a break, as odd as this might sound. Because of his startling uber-success in the ’80s, nearly everything he has released in the time since is met with a critical sniff and a rolling of the eyes. “Not as good as he once was,” is the mantra, which basically translates as “I want him to be that guy in ‘Purple Rain’ again.”

But not wanting to be that guy in “Purple Rain” again has been a prime motivator for Prince over the decades, as he released albums with fewer and fewer concessions to the mainstream, some of which were brilliant, and all of which were at the very least interesting. For the past decade or so, he has been a bit of an ephemeral presence – popping up to slay us on a televised awards show, or showing up for brief spurts of touring and then fading back into the mythical playground that is his Paisley Park compound in Minneapolis. It was beginning to look like the guy would never release a full album again, preferring instead to parcel his wares out gradually.

But now, as if arriving from nowhere for no particularly tangible reason, we have not one, but two new fully actualized Prince albums. And no, this double-release is not the folly of some rich, cloistered and egomaniacal pop personage badly in need of an editor – think Axl Rose and Guns ‘n’ Roses “Use Your Illusion” I & II – but is rather a representation of twin sides of the man’s estimable gift. “Plectrum Electrum” represents the diminutive inferno’s peerless funk and rock credentials, and is a guitar-heavy affair performed entirely by Prince and the all-female power trio 3rdeyegirl. “Art Official Age” is a bona fide Prince solo album, by contrast, and as such, fulfills its brief by being stylistically all over the place, its conceptual continuity provided solely by the fact that it’s all Prince and it’s all good.

“When life’s a stage/in this brand new age/how do we engage?” ponders the Princely one during “Art Official Cage,” thereby framing the thematic material addressed throughout the “Art Official Age” album, namely the diminishment of genuine human interaction in an era enslaved to technology, and the attendant reduction in our abilities to discern the wheat amongst the chaff. And even if this opening gambit is funky as all get out, it’s not a throw-back to ’80s Prince, preferring instead to turn contemporary EDM on its head, and to marry the “out there” aspects of Radiohead to a far less European groove.

Throughout the balance of “Art Official Age,” it’s easy to trace Prince’s influence on pretty much every pop/R&B star who has come down the turnpike in the post-“Purple Rain” world. You can hear what Justin Timberlake and Bruno Mars are going for when Prince grabs ahold of a ballad like “This Could be Us” or “Breakdown,” but the differences are many, the most prominent being that these tracks are incredibly well-written, and no team of songwriters needed to convene in aid of their composition, as Prince himself is a songwriting army of one.

On the other side of the coin, we have “Plectrum Electrum,” an album that acknowledges the simple and often transcendent pleasures inherent to killer funk grooves and Hendrix-like guitar solos. The album is simply overflowing with both, and yet “Plectrum” sounds like the work of a full-fledged band, one whose front man and songwriter happens to be seemingly incapable of writing songs devoid of memorable hooks. There are no dogs here, no in-studio jams disguised as songs, no throwaways. Drummer Hannah Ford Welton , when she isn’t making for a most convincing Cindy Blackman Santana doppelganger in the drumming department, also handles lead vocals, and rather effectively during the sultry “Stopthistrain.” The tireless and exuberant funk takes a break in acknowledgement of some superb balladry here, most notably during the sensual sway of “Tictactoe,” a song that, during a different age, would’ve been a massive radio smash.

Already, these albums have come under fire from members of the media who, it seems, refuse to forgive Prince for growing older, preferring he stay in the late ’80s forever, dropping pop-funk gems like “Let’s Go Crazy” and “1999” into a world that would have no context for receiving them. Let them gnash their teeth. Meanwhile, Prince is making music that applies to the present day, just as “Purple Rain” made sense in its own milieu. And he remains a startlingly inventive artist.

Local review of new Prince albums.

To me it's apples and oranges. (That may be Prince's purpose, as with LOtUSFLOW3R/MPLSºUND.) I love AOA. PE is icing on the cake for me. A very good album.

Philly76 said:

I think AOA hangs together better, but I think after the dust has settled and in years to come people who now are all about AOA will discover more things they like on PE because it's not just "the rock album" it's just as varied as AOA or any other Prince release.

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KingSausage said:

2freaky4church1 said: