http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2014/09/29/prince-3rdeyegirl-plectrumelectrum-art-official-age-listen-up-album-of-the-week/16423091/

By releasing two albums on the same day, Prince plays to a pair of personality traits that have defined his career: his endearingly prolific creativity and his maddening inability to edit himself.

Art Official Age (**½ out of four), a vintage-styled set of funk and soul, and PlectrumElectrum (**½), an album with his female power trio 3rdEyeGirl, sound too different to have been packaged together. But they suffer from the same problems: The highlights are thrilling enough to raise expectations yet they make tracks that once might have languished in the vaults of Paisley Park sound even more exasperating.

"Welcome home, class," Prince intones professorially on Art Official Cage, "you've come a long way." He's soon singing over a four-on-the-floor EDM-disco groove that helps him set up a futuristic concept about falling into suspended animation for 45 years and re-awakening in a utopian society (think Rip Van Winkle in the digital-cloud age).

The storyline doesn't exactly provide a structure for Prince's metaphysical funk (the Housequake-style floor-shaker The Gold Standard) and falsetto soul (This Could B Us), but it's no weirder than imagining the boys vs. the girls in the World Series of love, as he did on 1987's U Got the Look.

Also, Prince remains enamored with electronically altered vocals, including one on Breakfast Can Wait that makes him sound like a duck.
Prince's 'Plectrumelectrum'


In some ways, PlectrumElectrum is the guitar-rock odyssey fans of tracks like Purple Rain and Sign "O" the Times' The Cross have always dreamed Prince would make. "You can call it the unexpected, or you can call it wow," he sings on the lead track. It's not completely unexpected — Prince has been posting 3rdEyeGirl videos, including a house-wrecking blues remake of Let's Get Crazy, for a while now — but PlectrumElectrum certainly has its "wow" moments.

The instrumental title track is a five-minute guitar workout that recalls early British hard rock, and Prince also lets loose at the end of Anotherlove. The women occasionally take the lead, as on AintTurninRound, but, as Prince sings on one song, "A girl with a guitar is 12 times better than another crazy band of boys."


Of the two albums, PlectrumElectrum has high points that are arguably better, at least for Prince's guitar fans, but it starts falling apart about halfway through. Art Official Age has an element of trainwreck wackiness that at least keeps it interesting. The albums share a song, FunkNRoll, that was recorded twice and ranks in the top half of material on each set.

Both Art Official Age and PlectrumElectrum are exciting at times, baffling at others, and it's hard to believe either couldn't have been better.

Download: From Art Official Age: Clouds, This Could B Us, The Gold Standard

From PlectrumElectrum: Wow, PlectrumElectrum, Anotherlove