One Nite Alone

While Prince was still a major figure in 2002 his star was not quite as high as it had been a decade earlier. At this point, The Purple One was releasing material at a good rate with at least one album a year and had his own label NPG (New Power Generation) within the Sony fold. 

I must admit that while I was a fan in the eighties and like many was blown away by his live performances even on TV, my interest peaked with Sign o’ the Times but nothing thereafter inspired a purchase. In the intervening 30 plus years nothing much changed, then I sat down with turntable maestro Touraj Moghaddam of Vertere fame at the recent London show and spent some time listening to music on an MG1 turntable, FM Acoustics amplifiers and Mad Grand Maestro speakers in one of the better rooms at the Park Inn event. He played a side of Prince’s One Nite Alone which was re-released in 2020 on vinyl, purple vinyl natch, and which sounds remarkably good considering the colour and the poptastic nature of many Prince recordings.

Not to be confused with One Nite Alone Live, on which Prince is joined by a full band and which contains only two songs from this album, One Nite Alone was recorded in spring 2001 at Paisley Park. And the artist is indeed almost totally alone on its ten tracks, the album states “Produced, arranged, composed and per4med by Prince”, however it seems that John Blackwell provides drums on two tracks, and the wee one’s doves, Divinity and Majesty apparently contributed “ambient singing”. What separates One Nite Alone from the majority of Prince’s output is that it is largely a voice and piano production. There are synth additions to fill out the sound but these are fairly restrained so you get a purity of Princely essence that is rare. The only similar album in the cannon is The Truth where he concentrates on vocal and acoustic guitar. 

One Nite Alone opens with the title track and a good choice it is, this is one of the strongest songs on the album and introduces the piano to excellent effect. His playing is reminiscent of Keith Jarret; there is the same solidity of tone and sense of controlled improvisation. The obvious difference is that where Jarrett warbles, groans, even moans along to the tune Prince has a voice to match the keyboard; on this occasion a high slightly ethereal voice that has clearly been recorded in a different acoustic and with plenty of effects. 

Happily this becomes less noticeable as the album progresses, what tends to always draw attention however is the occasional use of deep bass synth notes that seem somewhat excessive for the arrangement. They are blunt enough to be bass pedals as found back in the days of prog yore but are presumably part of the synth embellishments added to the mix. 

The sound isn’t overly compressed and the piano itself has a natural reverb that gives it a sense of body and space. ‘Ur Gonna C Me’ is another example of the high voice and pared back arrangement typical of this album, with no clear rhythm and a strange ghostly denouement. ‘Here On Earth’ uses a spoken intro along with bass and drums, it’s a jazz tinged ballad of sorts that brings a change of vibe of the A side. 

The fourth track is ‘A Case of U’, a surprise cover of the Joni Mitchell classic that limits itself to just two verses and chorus from the original, here the voice approaches the high register of Mitchell’s on Blue but sound richer thanks to layered effects. It’s a pity that this song isn’t longer but perhaps not surprising given that Prince rarely covered other artist’s songs, what is slightly odd is the way it peters out after a bit of jazz vamping. The highlight of the B side is the controversial ‘Avalanche’ which caused a stir with the line “Abraham Lincoln was a racist who said ‘U cannot escape from history’”. You hear more extreme stuff on ‘Womens Hour’ these days.

One Nite Alone shows that Prince could make intimate and beautiful music when he put his mind to it, that he could play piano better than many realise and that his late works warrant further investigation.

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