Art Official Age Review

Returning to his old label after decades of hostility, he made the most contemporary sounding record of his later years, working with a co producer who understood modern low end and vocal processing. It genuinely does not sound like an old man's album. Breakdown is the best thing on it, a slow build from a whisper to a full voiced admission of regret, and it is the only track where the writing matches the presentation.

U Know is sleek and cold. Clouds and Way Back Home carry the narrative conceit, narrated by a female voice explaining the future, and the conceit is thinner than the effort spent on it. Elsewhere the grooves are good and the songs underneath them are sketches: two verses, a hook, a fade. As a demonstration that he could still make a record that sat comfortably beside anything else released that year, it works. As a set of songs to live with, it is a long way below the shelf it wants to reach.