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KYLIE : AFTER DARK |
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| MAIN PAGE NEWS BIOGRAPHY KYLIEOGRAPHY |
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REVIEWS |
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FEVER REVIEW BY ATTITUDE (OCT 2001) |
"If she had a fiver for every time the words
'more adult' have been bandied around her career, Kylie would have
approximately enough extra cash in her purse for a nice winter scarf. Here
we go again. In this instance 'more adult' is being used to contradict the
markedly 'less adult' Light Years, a record that still feels a little warm
in its grave and won't ever qualify as finished business until whichever
numbskull it was that blocked Your Disco Needs You as a single is slapped
into submission. 'More adult' also translates as a clubbier, sleeker, more
coherent and hugely more derivative record. Blimey, the music men have been
on some ram-raiding mission here. Madison Avenue's Don't Call Me Baby
'assists' slick opener More More More; Love At First Sight is a rum old
retread through Stardust's Music Sounds Better With You, and such is
the shameless similarity between their Red Alert and Give It To Me, you
suspect Basement Jaxx could sue. So far, so Dannii (ouch!). And let's not
even touch on the album title (coming soon- Material Minogue!). There's
plenty of fun to be had from Fever if you hang out with it a while, though.
Already you know the simple, semi-erotic pleasure to be found from hearing
li'l Ms Minogue cooing "I've got a dark secret in me" over broken beated
Kraftwerky on the awesome single Can't Get You Out Of My Head'. In keeping
with its submissive lyrical motif, the prose herein is strictly old-school
Kylie throughout (i.e. she's never less than available, sexually). An
eleventh hour addition sees Can't Get You...'s little sister welcomed to the
fold in Come Into My World. A pair of those belters is no small triumph in
anybody's language. As with Light Years, the album ends with its most
contemporary dancefloor invocation, though alas this time its called Burning
Up (coming soon- Like A Minogue!). A rhythmless acoustic build-up to a
cosmically Balearic, instrumental chorus. Really, it's quite the thing.
Prime picking of the lot is the swelteringly hot In Your Eyes, in which
Kylie picks up the Francais filter and delivers a bona fide club smash that
hints at the progression in disco policy over the last couple of seasons
without submitting anything in the way of personality. The chorus builds
like an erection, as they say in Ibiza, and it shall be number one for a
month if its marketed correctly (i.e. there's a discreet public airing of
the delightful Minogue posterior). Mind you, if the record company's erratic
behaviour on single releases from the last album is anything to go by you'll
probably get the piss-poor Fragile, a couple of other album fillers and the
true gems will sit on the sidelines, devoid of spotlight. Fingers crossed
that everyone will be a little 'more adult' about it. Ahem."
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FEVER REVIEW BY WORLDPOP (AUG 2001) |
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1. MORE MORE MORE. A strange start to the
album, this is a breezy disco number with Kylie's voice in husky 'n'
sensuous mode, and not a cover of the old Andrea True Connection hit most
recently made popular by Bananarama. It sets the tone for the Fever's
danced-up feel and, as the song spins towards its fade, Kylie repeats the,
'Give it up, give, I just can't give it up so give me more, more, more,'
refrains. 2. LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. Begins with Modjo-like guitar licks then slinks into another up-tempo disco-inspired track, while the lyrics find Kylie in loved-up mode, singing 'Baby when I heard you for the first time I knew we were meant to be as one.' Dropping out for the bridge to the chorus it slams back in for a big fat chorus with loads of disco filter in the second verse. 3. CAN'T GET YOU OUT OF MY HEAD. Whether this beats Victoria Beckham to No.1 or not doesn't affect the fact that this first single from Fever is one of the most infectiously catchy Kylie singles ever with more than just a little nod to ancient techno pioneers, Kraftwerk. 4. FEVER. This title track begins a bit like a dancier version of Cameo's (and Melanie B's) Word Up and has a distinctly 80's feel to it without sounding dated. Kylie uses Fever to compare love with an illness, singing 'This fever sure has got me good'. Things get a bit more pervy when she continues, 'Tell me straight doctor, what do you diagnose? There ain't a surgeon out there any place in all the world so now shall I remove my clothes?' Oo-er! 5. GIVE IT TO ME. Yet another upbeat tune, this time with sparse clattering beats (it'll be even more difficult to dance to than Steps' version of Chain Reaction) and a chorus that sounds like Kylie's been listening to the Eurythmics. Combine this with super-subtle licks that sound like Basement Jaxx's Red Alert and you're on to a winner! 6. FRAGILE. 'I get butterflies, water in my eyes, cos I'm fragile when I hear your name.' Surely time for a ballad? Not on this album- Fragile is a subtle house number with production reminiscent of off-the-peg Todd Terry and more of Kylie's breathy vocals. There's one point when she wails 'I'm the only one,' where she's a dead ringer for Madonna. Perfect for listening when you slump into your sofa after a night on the tiles... 7. COME INTO MY WORLD. Kylie thought she'd finished her album until this song turned up on her desk, and she was right to hold things up a bit so she could include it! It's written and produced by Rob Davis and Cathy Dennis- the team behind Can't Get You Out Of My Head and in a lot of ways it's almost identical. Fortunately they've written a different- and just as good- chorus and there's a hypnotic 'na na nana nana' loop at the end of the song. 8. IN YOUR EYES. Casts our minds back to Kylie's last album with the line, 'Is the world still spinning around?' but assures that 'I don't feel like coming down' - that's obvious from the tracks so far because there have been absolutely no ballads! This one, which is co-written by Spice Girls writer Biff Stannard takes the album's ideas of pop and dance and disco and condenses them into one song. And Kylie's still in the mood for love: 'I've been watching you lately,' she sings '...I want to make it with you'. 9. DANCEFLOOR. Strings and a thumping beat make this one of the most discofied tracks on the album- and like Disco Down on Light Years it's a tribute to discotheques! 'On the dancefloor, gonna lose it to the music; got my body gonna use it,' sings Kylie. This is one of the strongest single contenders on Fever and gets better with every listen. 10. LOVE AFFAIR. Kicking off with a guitary riff and simple drum beat (a bit like New Order's Blue Monday), Love Affair has all the disco filter, vocoders and tempting lyrics you could want: 'I am only here for a little while, would you like to take me out tonight?'. This may not be one of the strongest songs on Fever but whack it on the stereo loud enough and it sounds just fine. 11. YOUR LOVE. Not many albums save their best songs until the second-to-last track but you can never expect Kylie to be predictable! Your Love (you guessed it- still no ballads) is blessed with sweet, summery, classic pop chorus (just what you'll be needing when the album finally hits the shops and we're approaching Christmas!) and features a beautiful strummy guitar line. It's also one of only a handful of tracks on Fever to make perfect sense the first time you hear it. 12. BURNING UP. So she's saved the ballad for the end, right? C'mon, with a title like Burning Up this could be nothing but a big banging anthem. Again it's about going clubbing 'down to the disco', and while the line, 'I'm burning up, I'm burning up baby,' might not be in particularly good taste given the recent ecstasy deaths this is a subtle dance number with vocoders and key changes all over the place. CONCLUSION: This is Kylie's eighth studio album, and in many ways it's her most daring yet, if not her best. Relentlessly upbeat, some songs nonetheless take a few listens until they make sense, but Can't Get You Out Of My Head took most people a few listens to get their heads around and now it's being hailed as one of Kylie's best ever singles! There are plenty of potential singles to choose from on this album and if you think this country was taken over by Light Years just wait for Kylie Fever to begin! Despite a simultaneous release for their albums, Posh and Kylie are beyond comparison: while Victoria's album rests entirely in the safe, currently-popular vein of garage and R&B pop, Kylie's is (if you excuse the pun) light years ahead while pleasingly retro, drawing on early electro influences and the disco sound of the Seventies.
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LIGHT YEARS REVIEW BY ATTITUDE (OCT 2000) |
"Let's get to it, to quote the pop minx
herself, right away: this is the best album of Kylie's career to date, hands
down. Sure, her 80's hits were all good fizzy fun, but any individuality was
crushed under the wheels of almighty SAW music machine, leaving Kylie only a
brief period to blossom with a string of superlative pop hits (the Better
The Devil You Know era) before her 90's rebellion into 'adult' dancepop
(check the
 rather
mercenary Hits+ for details) it looked like any fun was to be relegate to
mere 'ironic' posing. 'I am a typeface' indeed. Until now. Simply put, Light
Years, is nothing less than her culmination. The joie de vivre of her heyday
is back, but this time with a knowing smirk. Who else could sing lines like
'007 heaven sur la mer' (Loveboat) and sound so utterly convincing? Full
marks to a certain Williams/Chambers for providing Kylie with lushest (not
to say campest) material to date (let's not even start on Your Disco Needs
You, which makes The Village People sound like Joy Division). Suprisingly,
the singles so far are the weakest links here: tracks like her (and I don't
use the term lightly) orgasmic Barry White cover Under The Influence Of
Love, the spikey Dee-Lite vibed Koocachoo (proving you can have fun and be
cool too) and call-to-the-floor future anthem Butterfly all scream for 45
action. And that's just for starters. A greatest hits set waiting to happen.
Go on, enjoy yourself"
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LIGHT YEARS ARTICLE BY MUSIC WEEK (APR 2000) |
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"The final tracks for Kylie Minogue's debut
Parlophone album, due for a September release, are set to be finalised next
week ahead for of its mastering, as details of her collaborations emerge.
Her first Fast Love-sounding single will be Spinning Around, produced by new
Vienna-based production team 7th District and penned by late Eighties/early
Nineties pop star Paula Abdul with songwriters Osborne Bingham, Kara Dio
Guardi and Ira Shickman (Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan). Parlophone managing director Keith Wozencroft describes Minogue- the chameleonesque female solo artist, who is A&Red by A&R director Miles Leonard and senior A&R manager Jamie Nelson- as a revelation to work with. He adds that her 'quality pop' record will enable her to reclaim her position at the top of the pop mountain. Minogue's last record was her eponymous album for Deconstruction in 1998- renamed from 1997's ill fated Impossible Princess- and the March 1998 number 14 single Breathe, which culminated in her splitting from the label. Her signing of a worldwide deal (excluding Australia), with Parlophone last June provoked not only interest from the media but also from songwriters and producers. Among those who contributed to the project were the Robbie Williams and Guy Chambers writing team, though Leonard dismisses suggestions that this particular collaboration is either predictable or similar to her previous association with the Manic Street Preachers. "It's not that predictable as they've not written for anyone else. I do believe those two have a massive pop sensibility when it comes to making a record that's contemporary," he says. He adds, "It's not a disco record, or a club record, or a return to the great years with PWL. We weren't looking for anything light and sugary or a throw-away pop record. But what Deconstruction was probably trying to achieve with a traditional rock band, we're trying with great songwriters." The Chambers/Williams tracks, recorded at Battery and Metropolis' studios in London, are Your Disco Needs You and Loveboat, while Chambers also penned I'm So High with Minogue and Megan Smith, and co-produced all three tracks with Williams' erst-while producer Steve Power. Parlophone is now confirming the final tracklisting, with collaborations with Rick Nowells and Madison Avenue thought unlikely to make the final cut. However, other collaborations on the 14-track record include three co-writes with Johnny Douglas (George Michael, All Saints)- Disco Down, Password, and Koocachoo. Douglas also produced So Now Goodbye, written by Minogue and former Brothers In Rhythm member and her long-term collaborator Steve Anderson at Sarm Studios in London. The pair also penned a ballad Bittersweet Goodbye, featuring strings arranged by Will Malone (The Verve, Massive Attack) and produced by Anderson at Real World and Whitfield Street studios, and Butterfly which was produced by Chicago-based Mark Picchiotti (Madonna, Abdul). Spice Girls and Five collaborators Biff Stannard and Julian Gallagher also surface as co-writers on the title track Light Years and Please Stay (with John Themis), recorded in Dublin's Windmill Lane studios. They also produced her only cover, Under The Influence, originally written by Paul Politi and Barry White and recorded by the Love Unlimited Orchestra, which Leonard sourced and Stannard recognised since he had often played it as a DJ at London club Heaven. Cher and Ricky Martin collaborator Brian Rawling- also wrote and produced On A Night Like This, an energetic track similar to the tone of the rest of the albums upbeat mood." |