The Vault
Finally, last year, Prince opened the doors to his legendary "vault" of unreleased music with Crystal Ball. But marred by an absurdly high price tag, the scattershot collection was ultimately disappointing. And the general consensus was that Warner Bros. was the problem. After all, the big evil record company had made poor Prince a slave and surely held all the best music to release at their whim. Well, supposedly, The Vault is all they've got. Though Old Friends 4 Sale doesn't contain his best outtakes, it does contain some very good ones. The title track was originally recorded in 1985 for inclusion in Under the Cherry Moon, but was re-recorded in 1991 and given to Joe Cocker. While the original version was a creepily personal tale of betrayal, this later version assumes
poetic distance and winds up sounding rather ordinary. Nonetheless, it's still a beautiful and touching song. Also recorded for Joe Cocker was "5 Women," a bluesy, piano-based number that is probably the best breakup song ever written. Among the other songs, the highlights are the warmly groovy "When the Lights Go Down," "It's About that Walk," a giddily loose paean to the female posterior, and the luscious ballad "Extraordinary." Though 10 songs is a painfully slight representation of the breadth and quality of Prince's unreleased work, The Vault nonetheless is an intriguing album.
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