The best summary of Kylie Minogue comes from Grant Morrison's 1992 Zenith comic: "Kylie is Vera Lynn for Third World War," yelled an eight-foot raver robot, and though nobody knew it then he was right. Like 1940s siren Dame Vera, she's one of Britain's most beloved entertainers, a comforting fixity in the pop firmament. But since 2001's career-defining "Can't Get You Out Of My Head", there's also an expectation that she'll play the futurist, define pop's leading edge. X, her comeback album after a fight against cancer, doesn't always succeed in balancing these two Minogues.
When Minogue's irrepressible teen chirp dominated Britain's charts in the late-80s, critics deplored her even while conceding that she herself was a likable personality. Minogue's career has often seemed a series of attempts to expand on this basic likability-- to add sex, or credibility, or modernism to the mix. The main barrier is generally her voice: Thin, slightly nasal, and prone to strain, it's a 128 kbps instrument in a 320 kpbs world. Minogue has usually been skillful enough to pick material that suits it, however. "2 Hearts", X's first single, is a fine example: An electro-rock vamp gesturing toward Goldfrapp, it's built around heavy piano rolls that give the track some bottom and Minogue freedom to hiss and slink.
"2 Hearts" ticks all the Minogue comeback boxes-- it's an unexpected stylistic move, it plays to her strengths, it's not copying herself or her close peers. It also, unfortunately, sounds like nothing else on X, which hops around searching for a sound it's comfortable with. X can seem like a revision primer for Minogue fans who've ignored the past few years of chart pop-- here's a bit of Gwen Stefani-style clockwork playground pop; here's some nu-Britney Spears cut-ups; here's some Sugababes sultriness. Here's electro-disco, cosmic disco, and just plain disco disco, plus nods to 1980s street dance and 00s r&b. If she'd thrown in a ska sample and cockney accent we'd have the whole contemporary UK pop scene on a single CD.
As you'd expect, not all of these styles suit her. "Heart Beat Rock", for instance, has fizzy Neptunes keyboards and a hot, stuttering beat. But the half-spoken lyrics need more sass than Minogue can give. Stefani giggling "I can make your heartbeat rock" might have been convincing-- Minogue just sounds twee. When that track ends and "The One"' shimmers gloriously in with New Order guitars and morse-code synths, the return to 4/4 dance-pop brings an almost tangible inrush of confidence. "I'm the One-- love me love me love me," she sings, and for these four minutes she is and we do. This kind of unfussy, hook-first music is what Minogue has always been best at, and back in her comfort zone she thrives.
In fact-- "2 Hearts" aside-- X's best tracks recall earlier victories. The heart of "No More Rain" is a hushed and lovely meditation on life's prettiness, like Minogue's haunting 2005 track "Made of Glass". Calvin Harris' production on "In My Arms" is like a cassette player version of Justice-- all hiss and stickytape-- but Minogue's roots were in cheap Xerox pop and she bounces around the tune with gusto.
Other songs see good ideas more clumsily executed. A Serge Gainsbourg sample makes "Sensitized" swing harder than anything else on X, but Minogue doesn't have the vocal power to match it. "Speakerphone" starts off with a tantalizing harp figure, then bundles it to the back of the mix assuming we'd prefer a Daft Punk retread instead. "Nu-Di-Ty" boasts the same writers, and the same sliced-up vocal treatments, as some of Britney's standard-setting Blackout, but here the relentless identity shifts result in a grating, baffling mess. On Minogue's comeback album, we want to hear Minogue.
Ultimately, we do. "Wow"'s funked-up electro sexiness may feel contrived, but its excitement is infectious anyway: It's great to hear Minogue having as much fun as she did on "The Loco-Motion" 20 years ago. Likability has got Kylie Minogue this far, and it pulls her through again-- even the weak tracks on X have a sparky enthusiasm that makes their magpie modernism sound less cynical. Vera Lynn wins this one: The third world war may have to wait.
