Kylie Minogue
Kiss Me Once

With a charming, kissable face behind a wet glass door, Kylie Minogue breaks the silence from the pop stage and gifts the world with her twelfth album, Kiss Me Once. The days of Greek-classical follies with Aphrodite, and the characteristic (and more recent) celebratory carousel for the quarter-century career, crowned with a modest greatest hits compilation and the acoustic-orchestral glamor of the hits replicated session at the famous Abbey Studios in London, are now far behind: the Australian-made refinement, fresh from the new partnership with Jay-Z's Roc Nation, as well as a vigor that seemed lost after the K25, continues on its path, heedless of age, of the new Lady GaGa, and of an audience that seems to prefer the pleasure of sobriety and simplicity almost denied by frantic beatmakers to the resounding stagings and extravagant sounds.

The last decade has forced Kylie into a series of enticing and complex challenges: first, the painful experience of breast cancer, fortunately resolved triumphantly, and then the attempts to replicate (and maybe double or triple) the boom of Fever and Can't Get You Out Of My Head, extraordinarily pleasing to the American public, naturally accustomed to exuberance, trash, and excesses, and poorly used to such a triumph of sophistication and elegance. Unfortunately, the disco-diva phase of the 2001-02 biennium did not generate commercially fruitful offspring, although it gave way to two pearls, Body Language and X, of rare magnificence and unusual brilliance, undoubtedly deserving a place among the pop masterpieces of the early 2000s. In 2010, Aphrodite, a homage to the great beauties (material and immaterial) of classical Greece, tried - for the first time - to blend the frivolous-dancing spirit (that from the beginnings of Loco-Motion and I Should Be So Lucky have stretched, continuously, to Light Years and the aforementioned Fever) with the soft-electronic freshness, queen of the Deconstruction period (Kylie Minogue and Impossible Princess), as well as the magnificent duo Body Language-X, a stellar pentagram blend which had fluctuating commercial success even in friendly Great Britain (Her Majesty's subjects snubbed Get Outta My Way, Better Than Today and Put Your Hands Up, respectively the second, third, and fourth singles).

We then arrive at the new Kiss Me Once, an album that neither represents a rebirth/resurrection nor a significant breakthrough, but merely a freshly baptized chapter of an enviable career. Eleven tracks that generate a second hybridization of sound: if the union between disco dance and electro glam gave birth to Aphrodite, now the family expands with the (somewhat “incestuous”) marriage between the “mongrel” Aphrodite and its predecessor X, a multi-production straddling pop-rock, retro synthpop, new wave, glamorous electronics, and tantalizing R&B. From this Mendelian coupling emerges Kiss Me Once, a pure & light pop album, danceable enough, fashionable but not too much, and nostalgically modest, with the only flaw of not being brave and creative enough for the standards of X and Impossible Princess.

To cut the ribbon on Kylie’s twelfth effort is Into The Blue, the first single with a synth-power pop flavor, a classic Minogue trademark that struggles, however, to compare with opening tracks like Slow, 2 Heart and All The Lovers, which anticipates the delightful Million Miles, an electro-disco frappé between Get Outta My Way and Put Your Hands Up (If You Feel Love). With Sexy Love and Sexercize, the Australian sprite hooks onto two currently trendy sounds: the funky rock vibe with disco flavor and the Skrillex-style dubstep, producing a sound kaleidoscope alternating between extremely frivolous and dark-sensual moods. I Was Gonna Cancel, produced by the current King Midas, Pharrell Williams, is the proven evidence that retro synth glamor is not to be discarded in the mothballs of lost memories, a glamor that also flirts with the dreamy Feels So Good and with the 80s New Romanticism of If Only. The whole is closed by the industrial aggression of Les Sex, the 90s house of the gorgeous Fine, and the uncertain featuring with Enrique Iglesias Beautiful, a semi-instrumental vocoder ballad.

Kylie returns, and with her comes that load of beauty, sensuality, freshness, and spontaneity capable of captivating even the detractors and those not familiar with mainstream pop. Sure, we don’t have the fashionista triumph of X, the lounge futurism of Body Language, and not even the avant-garde of Impossible Princess, yet we cannot help but enjoy a nice retro glittery pop menu, heir to an artistic tradition that should never be repudiated by the archives of good "chart" music. May God preserve us a true monument to good taste and good music.

Kylie Minogue, Kiss Me Once

Into The Blue - Million Miles - I Was Gonna Cancel - Sexy Love - Sexercize - Feels So Good - If Only - Les Sex - Kiss Me Once - Beautiful - Fine.