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PAST IS PAST Kylie Minogue rocks again

Judging from the kind of media attention that Kylie Minogue has received post-breast-cancer treatment, it seems she is most eager to announce to the world that she is back and it’s business as usual. Listening to her latest release “X” (Virgin Records, India, price: Rs. 350), one can’t help but feel that perhaps she tries too hard to get the message through.

“X” doesn’t try to tread new ground. On the other hand, it is determined to steer firmly through recent pop history. Thus, so much of the album sounds like a primer to the last decade or more, with brief touches on such fare as Madonna, Britney Spears, Daft Punk and so on.

And in the process of flitting around and searching for a familiar sound, the album never quite defines its own sound, its own space. The result is a collection of some good, some not-so-good and some frankly bad tracks that never quite come together as an album.

“X” certainly starts off in style with “2 Hearts”, the musical equivalent of Minogue strutting into a room wearing the most predictable outfit in the world, but wearing it so well that every eye on the room is automatically on her. “Sensitised” carries the suave sashay forward with a powerful track built around a sample from Serge Gainsbourg’s “Bonnie and Clyde”. On “The One”, Minogue does the 4X4 pop that she does so well with New Order-style guitars backing her up. And finally there’s “Wow”, which harks back to the best of Minogue’s days. The problem with “X”, however, is that these high points are few and far between, separated from each other by forgivable missteps and unforgivable sins. “Speakerphone”, with its heavy processing and disconnected vocals, is an example of the former. As is “Heart Beat Rock”, which falls through because Minogue just can’t produce the attitude that a Gwen Stefani might manage. Then there are the mistakes, such as the hollow, completely vacuous “All I See”. Or worse still, “Nu-di-ty” in which Minogue encourages her mate to pull the zipper down and work the “thing” out, sounding more like an acne-ridden fumbling 14-year-old than one of the veterans of pop.

And that’s another problem with the album. No one expects profundity from a Minogue album. Few people even expected honest reflection on her experiences with illness and possibly death. But the lyric-writing on this album drops even below the meagre expectations one has of pop. In the end, that makes “X” difficult to relate to as anything more than some good beats.

RAKESH MEHAR

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