X fails to hit the spot

Published on Friday 23 November 2007 01:02

KYLIE: X ***

PARLOPHONE, 12.99

SHE'S back, and this time she's got diamante stuck on her face and crystal fronds dripping from her fingertips. The costumes just get more and more elaborate - it is as if Kylie is retreating further into fairytale, shielding herself from us.

Whatever one may feel about her musical output, Kylie deserves to be congratulated on the immaculately choreographed job she has done with her career over the past 20 years. There's been no Britney-style unravelling, not even a brief lapse of poise when the media took a salacious interest in her relationship with Michael Hutchence, nor in those lean, late 1990s times when - sob - nobody bought her records.

The pocket pop chameleon has done SexKylie, dispensed with the short-lived IndieKylie, and revelled in the glory of ComebackKylie. Does this ability to manipulate an image which probably has little to do with the real Kylie Minogue make her one of the best pop stars?

Then came the persona she hadn't prepared for - BraveKylie. Minogue's recent battle with breast cancer was handled with dignified efficiency. The public were told only enough to feel involved, but the game was up - the nation's favourite dressing-up doll was flesh and blood after all. And yet, at a time when she appears more fallibly human than ever, Kylie has chosen to release an album which is predominantly artifice.

Although the train-wreck Britney and the ice control queen Kylie, both former child stars, appear to have little in common these days, there are musical comparisons between their new albums. Both performers - I hesitate to call them singers, as their voices are so processed these days - are mere cyphers in the hands of their producers, who have constructed these albums to reflect their impression of the quintessential 2007 pop product. In the end, Kylie emerges from this precision procedure slightly ahead, by virtue of shoehorning some decent songs into the sleek, robotic frame of X.

The comeback single 2 Hearts makes a strong enough impression with its glam electro stomp. The hip retro synth pop of Like a Drug and pseudo-Daft Punk sound of Speakerphone also go according to plan, while In My Arms marries a simple, upbeat Eurovision-style tune and lyrics with a glossy contemporary production.

Sensitized samples the vocal whoops and guitar from Serge Gainsbourg's Bonnie and Clyde but just in case old Serge couldn't cut the mustard, songwriting big guns Guy Chambers and Cathy Dennis have been recruited to finish the job. The result fails to match the sum of its parts.

Scottish musician and producer Calvin Harris's much-heralded involvement in the end only amounts to one production credit, though given the catchy electro drift of the album, you can appreciate why Kylie wanted to work with him. He's done what he can, grafting a sparse electro funk treatment on to Heart Beat Rock, but it's a very thin track.

She then does her mechanically sexy wish-fulfilment thing on Nu-di-ty and coos "I'm connecting with you, can you feel me?" like a sultry cyborg on the dreamy synth rapture of The One. But, finally, she drops the breathy come-on faade for the sweet ambient pop number No More Rain. Its hopeful lyric is as probably about as close as we are going to get to the private thoughts of Ms Minogue on her recent travails. "Funny how life can unfold," she muses, "sun coming up on another day, get a second-hand chance, wanna do it again, got rainbow colours and no more rain."

From here, she keeps things light, with the skipping R&B of All I See celebrating an entrancing encounter on the dancefloor, and the gauche, girly wonder of Wow, which sounds like a hipper, updated version of her permed PWL persona.

X finishes with Cosmic, an old-fashioned, elegant pop song. With no clever production to hide behind, this is as exposed as Kylie is prepared to get, trilling: "I put these things aside for years, till laughter took the place of tears, it's like I was asleep, yet now I'm here."

This will no doubt be claimed as Kylie's "most personal album yet", but it's all relative. Even Madonna, hardly a conservative pop star, had to resort to an anonymous disco record to restore her commercial fortunes, so there is no chance of any risks being taken here. However, Kylie would have to release one almighty turkey of an album to dent her popularity, which has never been higher, especially now that she's flaunted her self-deprecating side on her recent TV special, The Kylie Show.

X, sealed with a kiss, does enough to ensure she gets to bat those jewelencrusted lashes for a good while yet.

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