3 keepers
keeper avg .300
The eastern-tinged title track is more a mood than a song with tenuous melodies and eastern touches, a move that seems to come out of nowhere after Prince's massively popular singles from his previous 80's releases. The familiarly-named "Paisley Park"**** embraces this technicolor psychedelic style in a more straightforward format, complete with charming "ching-ching" finger cymbals; he combines the same sonic hook and frantic James Brown shuffling on the not-so aptly-named "Tambourine." The album's big singles also embrace these arty, psychedelic touches; Prince makes heavy use of strings on "Raspberry Beret"****, and exuberantly lets loose with Little Richard screams, while the funky "Pop Life" somehow got to number 7 in the US with a strange, jazzy chord progression accompanied by drunken or ghostly chords on synth. These tracks may be a challenging departure from what I think of as his established style, but strangely enough this album was recorded before Purple Rain so this was the direction Prince meant to go all along. He rocks though the motions on his surprisingly jingoistic adaptation of "America," where the communists bring about the destruction of the country that's not patriotic enough (it doesn't sound like parody). "Temptation"**** on the other hand rocks aggressively, with a heavy swing and a brilliantly jarring and disorienting slap-back guitar solo that fades to a weird meditation on morality in the form of a dramatized conversation with God. The remaining songs cover ballad styles, "The Ladder" a soulful but predictable carbon copy of "Purple Rain," a slow ballad "Condition of the Heart," and ending with slow R&B "On The Couch" (reminding me of "Giving Him Something He Can Feel" from 1992).
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