Publication: The San Diego Union-Tribune [US]
Date: April 2, 1986
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Title: "Intriguing New Album May Not Boost Prince's Career"
Reviewed By: Davina Infusino

Prince is a musical genius. Even his detractors admit that.

But every hero must fall, it seems. The question is: What will it take to get Prince on his feet again? The musical ingeniousness of his new album "Parade" may not be enough.

Not enough for the Minneapolis loner who defied music-business conventions and set up an outpost musical empire away from the industry centers of Los Angeles and New York....

For the black man who ventured into white rock territory, shuffling gender roles along the way, mixing musical styles, and ignoring the boundaries between black and white social mores, sex and spiritualism, artistic risk and commercial appeal.

For the singer who reached dizzying popularity with his 1984 album and film, "Purple Rain," then froze in fright at the height, becoming paranoid and withdrawn.

For the star whose overzealous bodyguards beaned photographers on the same night that he didn't show up for the "We Are The World" recording sessions.

Never mind that Prince performed a string of unpublicized concerts for handicapped kids or donated $500,000 to an inner-city teacher-training program in Chicago. Prince was branded as a cold-hearted, egomaniac misogynist, (despite being an P artistic mentor to Sheila E.).

In 1985, he released the LP "Around the World in a Day," a sometimes self-indulgent, psychedelic pastiche tracing a loss of innocence, repentance and redemption. The clash between his arrogant image and fanciful album rubbed the public the wrong way.

Then came word about his film in France, "Under the Cherry Moon," where he fired the director and took over the production. Now the music from the film arrives on "Parade."

Beatles-esque psychedelia once again plays a part in the music here, particularly on the opening Sgt. Pepper-like montage of "Christopher Tracy's Parade" and in the Indian intonations that dot several cuts. But the album's greatest source of inspiration is jazz -- from contrapunctal melody lines to contrasting instrumental textures, to interspersed jazz chord progressions.

Prince always has dabbled with jazz-related techniques in a pop context, even on his big pop hit, "Little Red Corvette." But this time, perhaps due to the influence of his father, John L. Nelson, a jazz performer who collaborated with his son on parts of the album, the jazz influence is overt. Songs like "Sometimes it Snows in April" and "I Wonder U" have the loose floating melodies of jazz rather than tight structures of his pop and funk material.

The album contains plenty of the latter, however, like the hip-swinging "Girls and Boys." It also has what might best be described as movie music like "Do U Lie," complete with French dialogue, violins and an old-fashioned, fanciful Broadway musical sound that Prince twists with odd harmonies and instrumental surprises. The album also boasts the wonderful homage to the power of musical minimalism, that catchy, compelling single "Kiss."

Except for "New Position," the lyrics, by the way, have few of the sexual references that got Prince in so much trouble with the Washington-based censors last summer (unless there's some untranslated suggestiveness in the French dialogue).

Even if "Parade" makes more sense after the film's release July 2, the album alone at least is unlikely to redeem him completely in the public's eyes. It lacks the mass appeal of "Purple Rain," and no doubt some of the music will fly above portions of his teen audience. P Others may mistake the experimentation for artistic narcissism.

But "Parade" is one of the most intriguing albums in a long time, revealing new subtleties with every listening and still new dimensions of this pop enigma named Prince.