Prince Piano And A Microphone 1983 Out Sep 21
It’s taken two years for the first of what will become a stream of posthumous releases to emerge from Prince’s vast archival vault, but the wait has been worthwhile. Taped in January 1983 at his Kiowa Trail home studio in Minnesota, Piano And A Microphone delivers exactly what its title promises, and much more.
Offering remarkable insights into Prince’s creative process, it features nine songs performed alone at the piano.
Some are classics-in-waiting (we get 90 delicious seconds of Purple Rain), some are tenderly exploratory covers (Joni Mitchell’s A Case Of You), some are in the first flood of composition (a fun, mumbo-jumbo bash at Strange Relationship, which appeared later on Sign O’ The Times), and some have remained unheard until now.
It’s taken two years for the first of what will become a stream of posthumous releases to emerge from Prince’s vast archival vault, but the wait has been worthwhile
They come all at once, stitched together in a single sweeping take, by turns embryonic, truncated and extemporised, a scattered trail of breadcrumbs to be picked up – or not – at some later point.
Ultimately, the songs are incidental, a mere pretext for Prince to flex his performative muscles.
Piano And A Microphone shows us the artist at play in his creative dressing-up box, throwing on styles and persona, pleasing himself, running on instinct.
We hear him road-testing arrangements on the fly, scatting rhythmic ideas and guitar parts, playing dazzling piano and flipping through his repertoire of vocal styles with unfiltered joy.
Of the two ‘new’ songs, the staccato pimp roll of Cold Coffee & Cocaine casts Prince in the role of lisping jive-talker, Tom Waits meets James Brown. It’s funky and very funny.
Why The Butterflies prowls jazzily, going nowhere but doing so elegantly. It’s easy to see why neither idea was developed beyond these sketches.
We already knew Prince was a genius. Piano And A Microphone performs the admirable service of deepening our understanding of why.
GIG OF THE WEEK
The The Barrowland, Glasgow
Rating: 
There is no better time for Matt Johnson to revivify The The after 20 years. The themes of his Eighties and early Nineties material feel so current, he could pass for a post-punk Nostradamus.
Brooding songs about Islamic-Christian conflict, raging lust, US imperialism and a ‘country divided to fall’ sounded remarkably apposite, even if their tightly wound musical settings – terse pop, taut funk, whispering shadow-music – grew claustrophobic over two hours.
In black shirt and trousers, Johnson looked like a radicalised Match Of The Day pundit, but sang with a preacher’s fervour.
A set that moved through varying shades of darkness finally found release in a rousing version of Hank Williams’s I Saw The Light and the sharp, bright piano notes of a wonderful Uncertain Smile.
THIS WEEK’S CD RELEASES
By Adam Woods
Eminem Kamikaze Out now
Rating:
While not the parent-terrifying peroxide megastar he once was, Eminem appears to have been reinvigorated lately, and the best moments of Kamikaze, his surprise new album, find him aiming his rage at an astonishing range of targets, from Trump and Pence to the new wave of young rappers. It might be middle-aged chuntering, if Eminem’s delivery on songs like The Ringer and Lucky You weren’t so ingenious and intricate. He can’t sustain the early assault, and his furious songs about women leave a nasty taste, but this holds reminders of what made him great
Paul Weller True Meanings Out Fri
Rating:
From The Jam’s English Rose 40 years ago to the Britpop-era Wild Wood, Paul Weller has never been afraid of his softer side, but True Meanings, fashioned entirely from acoustic guitars, elegant strings and such things, is his first full album in that vein. Almost all of it is delicate and beautiful, from the tense bossa nova of The Soul Searchers to the closing ebb and flow of White Horses, although after a fine run of notably diverse albums, True Meanings does ultimately suffer slightly from its never-changing mood