La Kylie gains the dubious honour of being the first artist to be featured twice on BiA, but then the need is rather pressing; there is an eerily familiar tendency to berate her (softly, with the brushed end of a broomstick) over the head for not returning with a concept album about cancer and betrayal unlike SHOCKINGLY AWARE, PRO-ACTIVE Britney who is ON THE SUSPECT CASE with her ACUTE GRASP of her not-remotely-resembling-Kelly-Rowland (but oddly-resembling-Kevin-Rowland) dilemma. Not that I want to demur on behalf of Blackout which as a pop album the rest of the century will find hard to surpass; it is beyond great and its awareness and grasp do not require mandatory capitalisation. But if Kylie wants to come back from what she was thrust into with an album of more-complicated-than-we-seem dancefloor sexpop then I'm likewise happy about that. Then again, this X album of hers is not bereft of demons; it bears the most disturbing front/back cover of any record since Simon Finn's Pass The Distance - the awkwardly candid eyebrow raising amidst the white and red polkadots on the front contrasting with the nightmare negative image on the reverse; is it Mephistopheles' butterfly, an image of her own expiry (was Morley a little too keen on the Ballardian car crash finale)?
The muted critical reception - other than the standard picture of men wanting Kylie to suffer on their behalf - is pretty inexplicable since X sounds mostly terrific, in 1981 terms a sort of Olivia Newton-John to Blackout's Kim Wilde. This is made particularly explicit by the two Bloodshy and Avant contributions which sound worldly yet suitably unworldly; "Speakerphone" is mellifluously desperate to be human, and "Nu-Di-Ty" padlocks Gwen S's trunk for good with its unprecedented Cabaret Voltaire/Roswell Rudd interface. "Into Your Arms" is sparky enough to make one temporarily forgive Calvin Harris in a Lily Allen/better with Dizzee sense. "2 Hearts" makes a better rockist fist than the overly prosaic rock (Brighton or Budgie?) of the new Girls Aloud platter. And I will leave it to others to extol to the important stars "The One," another song which I wish Billy MacKenzie had survived long enough to hear or sing with its exquisite Miro float of a chorus ("Loveme loveme loveme LOVE ME!") and its never apter story ("I'm the one!," "I'm connecting with you," "Are you receiving me?").
For here I will reserve unalloyed love for "Wow," the record's most straightforward (although it is hardly straightforward) pop/dance song and the one which, when she performed it on The Kylie Show, I initially mistook for Special Guest Star G Stefani before realising there was no such thing. Another miraculous production from Greg Kurstin - when are people going to realise the unassuming genius of this man, LA's own Brian Higgins? - "Wow"'s central motif of processed mouths-as-muted-plunger-trombone-section ("WowWowWowWOW!") seems to construct a daisy chain of all great girl pop right back to the Boswells and the Andrews and its early 1982 purple glow is smashing, with its "Look Of Love"/"Holiday" chord sequence (but its 2007 rhythms!) and its subject matter of dancing, and looking, and fancying, and taking it from here (no more Glums, or as another track has it "No More Rain"); "I Should Be So Lucky"'s necessary bookend, the melting, poised icicle of the "Every inch of you smells of desire" section of the chorus. She's lucky that she can sing this, we're luckier that we can dance and love to it, and the car drives on ("You're such a rush! The rush is never ending!") so let's enjoy the newly green city in full knowledge of the highway we had to dream to reach there. You got it? XXXX!
The muted critical reception - other than the standard picture of men wanting Kylie to suffer on their behalf - is pretty inexplicable since X sounds mostly terrific, in 1981 terms a sort of Olivia Newton-John to Blackout's Kim Wilde. This is made particularly explicit by the two Bloodshy and Avant contributions which sound worldly yet suitably unworldly; "Speakerphone" is mellifluously desperate to be human, and "Nu-Di-Ty" padlocks Gwen S's trunk for good with its unprecedented Cabaret Voltaire/Roswell Rudd interface. "Into Your Arms" is sparky enough to make one temporarily forgive Calvin Harris in a Lily Allen/better with Dizzee sense. "2 Hearts" makes a better rockist fist than the overly prosaic rock (Brighton or Budgie?) of the new Girls Aloud platter. And I will leave it to others to extol to the important stars "The One," another song which I wish Billy MacKenzie had survived long enough to hear or sing with its exquisite Miro float of a chorus ("Loveme loveme loveme LOVE ME!") and its never apter story ("I'm the one!," "I'm connecting with you," "Are you receiving me?").
For here I will reserve unalloyed love for "Wow," the record's most straightforward (although it is hardly straightforward) pop/dance song and the one which, when she performed it on The Kylie Show, I initially mistook for Special Guest Star G Stefani before realising there was no such thing. Another miraculous production from Greg Kurstin - when are people going to realise the unassuming genius of this man, LA's own Brian Higgins? - "Wow"'s central motif of processed mouths-as-muted-plunger-trombone-section ("WowWowWowWOW!") seems to construct a daisy chain of all great girl pop right back to the Boswells and the Andrews and its early 1982 purple glow is smashing, with its "Look Of Love"/"Holiday" chord sequence (but its 2007 rhythms!) and its subject matter of dancing, and looking, and fancying, and taking it from here (no more Glums, or as another track has it "No More Rain"); "I Should Be So Lucky"'s necessary bookend, the melting, poised icicle of the "Every inch of you smells of desire" section of the chorus. She's lucky that she can sing this, we're luckier that we can dance and love to it, and the car drives on ("You're such a rush! The rush is never ending!") so let's enjoy the newly green city in full knowledge of the highway we had to dream to reach there. You got it? XXXX!
