20040424
From: Salon.com
Kylie Minogue's teasingly tantric "Body Language" and Sophie Ellis-Bextor's icily elegant "Shoot From the Hip" make Britney and Christina's over-the-top vocal gyrations look like child's play.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Charles Taylor
Feb. 10, 2004 | Kylie Minogue purrs her way through her new album, "Body Language" (Capitol). Even more than the beats or the blipping electronic riffs that pop up in the songs -- at times the album seems to be an homage to '80s pop in the way that her "Light Years" was the best disco album anyone had made in years -- it's Minogue's voice that you retain from "Body Language." The vocals here are breathy, nasal in a teasing, seductive way (the occasional double tracking heightens the seductiveness). She vibrates and elongates the last syllables of words before she lets them die away, like someone whispering a come-hither in your ear.
"Body Language" is terrifically sexy without resorting to the blatancy that characterizes so much dance pop. When you watch Britney and Christina et al. acting sexy, it all seems like so much heavy lifting. They work so hard at seeming sexy that you wonder how there's any energy left for sex after the performance. If they exhaust you, how frisky can they be? Even when Minogue is at her friskiest (as in "Red Blooded Woman," where she sings "let me keep freakin' around"), she knows how to hold back. You hear that less in the lyrics -- which have been carefully calibrated not to make her seem like just another hot-to-trot cookie ("Nature should explore the physical/ But don't confuse emotions with the pleasure principle") -- than in the determination to entice rather than overwhelm that defines the candy-coated vocals.
The fact that singers' voices are now just another part of the technology open to producers has been used to paint almost all pop singers as cogs who don't inject any sensibility or personality into the music. Typically of Kylie Minogue, there's nothing "personal" about "Body Language." But professionalism this slick has its own rewards, and the pleasure of "Body Language" is in hearing the little girl at play behind the sexy diva. Perhaps reacting to the commercial failure of her intriguing album "Impossible Princess," Kylie Minogue has, since "Light Years," declined to present albums as a radical reworking of persona or a personal statement (a relief, since most pop star statements have about as much distinction as a Barbara Walters interview). "Body Language" is simply Kylie's latest costume party, open to all comers.
Perhaps it's naive to talk about innocence in music this calculated and commercial. But there's no crassness in Minogue's calculation. Sure, she's got her own lingerie line, promoted each year in her official calendar, and each album comes with a little portfolio of sexy new photos. Maybe it's that she is still trying to establish herself as a star in the United States and thus we're not glutted with Kylie gossipy profiles. But the effect of that P.R. drought in the U.S. has been to make Minogue an anomaly among today's pop divas -- one who seems comfortable with rising or falling solely on the music.
She's chosen a great role model for this edition of Kylie's Dance Party: Brigitte Bardot. In the photos that adorn the booklet of "Body Language," Minogue has B.B.'s pile of lush, tangled blond hair (the type that looks like she's just gotten out of bed and is ready to get back in), her kohl-lined eyes and a teasing glimpse of gap-toothed front teeth visible between parted, pouty lips. The French-style striped jersey she wears on the cover accentuates the comparison, as does the photo of Minogue leaning against a Kawasaki that recalls the poster of Bardot in thigh-high boots straddling a Harley.
Aping the look of the greatest sex symbol who ever lived is a smart move. The poutiness and the self-involved playfulness of Bardot aren't equaled by "Body Language" (no one has ever equaled Bardot), but they are echoed. Minogue may play a kitten in the thrall of sex here, but there's always a sense that she's going to pick up her tresses and go home the way a kid will collect her toys after a playground dispute. "I'm going home/ I want my records back," she sings in "Someday," and you can't help feeling there's some honesty in not selling this as the symbol of liberation the lyrics imply but as a celebration of the horny petulance it is. That ties right into the ephemeral pleasures of this sort of pop music. It may not be grown-up music, but it's a lot more fun than Norah Jones' "Music to Eat Brie By," or whatever the hell her album is called.
The best track on "Body Language" is the first. "Slow" is stripped-down, dance-floor music and beguilingly strange. It doesn't provoke the "what the hell is this?" reaction that Kelis' great "Milkshake" does (another example of playground sexiness), but it is the kind of record whose quirks stick out on the first listening and then become the very thing you play it again and again to hear. Over a beat that never seems to escalate but remains steady, like a pot of coffee kept percolating at an exact temperature, Minogue does her best teasing yet. The chorus -- "slow down and dance with me/ yeah/ slow/ skip the beat and move with my body/ yeah/ slow" -- is broken up into breathy, insinuating little exhortations that work their way right into your brain and your body. The fun of the song is the way it doesn't pay off, the way it remains at the same level, the way Minogue keeps drawing you in with a sensual promise only to delay satisfaction again and again. She may have pioneered a new genre here -- tantric dance pop.
Dance pop grows up
Kylie Minogue's teasingly tantric "Body Language" and Sophie Ellis-Bextor's icily elegant "Shoot From the Hip" make Britney and Christina's over-the-top vocal gyrations look like child's play.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Charles Taylor
Feb. 10, 2004 | Kylie Minogue purrs her way through her new album, "Body Language" (Capitol). Even more than the beats or the blipping electronic riffs that pop up in the songs -- at times the album seems to be an homage to '80s pop in the way that her "Light Years" was the best disco album anyone had made in years -- it's Minogue's voice that you retain from "Body Language." The vocals here are breathy, nasal in a teasing, seductive way (the occasional double tracking heightens the seductiveness). She vibrates and elongates the last syllables of words before she lets them die away, like someone whispering a come-hither in your ear.
"Body Language" is terrifically sexy without resorting to the blatancy that characterizes so much dance pop. When you watch Britney and Christina et al. acting sexy, it all seems like so much heavy lifting. They work so hard at seeming sexy that you wonder how there's any energy left for sex after the performance. If they exhaust you, how frisky can they be? Even when Minogue is at her friskiest (as in "Red Blooded Woman," where she sings "let me keep freakin' around"), she knows how to hold back. You hear that less in the lyrics -- which have been carefully calibrated not to make her seem like just another hot-to-trot cookie ("Nature should explore the physical/ But don't confuse emotions with the pleasure principle") -- than in the determination to entice rather than overwhelm that defines the candy-coated vocals.
The fact that singers' voices are now just another part of the technology open to producers has been used to paint almost all pop singers as cogs who don't inject any sensibility or personality into the music. Typically of Kylie Minogue, there's nothing "personal" about "Body Language." But professionalism this slick has its own rewards, and the pleasure of "Body Language" is in hearing the little girl at play behind the sexy diva. Perhaps reacting to the commercial failure of her intriguing album "Impossible Princess," Kylie Minogue has, since "Light Years," declined to present albums as a radical reworking of persona or a personal statement (a relief, since most pop star statements have about as much distinction as a Barbara Walters interview). "Body Language" is simply Kylie's latest costume party, open to all comers.
Perhaps it's naive to talk about innocence in music this calculated and commercial. But there's no crassness in Minogue's calculation. Sure, she's got her own lingerie line, promoted each year in her official calendar, and each album comes with a little portfolio of sexy new photos. Maybe it's that she is still trying to establish herself as a star in the United States and thus we're not glutted with Kylie gossipy profiles. But the effect of that P.R. drought in the U.S. has been to make Minogue an anomaly among today's pop divas -- one who seems comfortable with rising or falling solely on the music.
She's chosen a great role model for this edition of Kylie's Dance Party: Brigitte Bardot. In the photos that adorn the booklet of "Body Language," Minogue has B.B.'s pile of lush, tangled blond hair (the type that looks like she's just gotten out of bed and is ready to get back in), her kohl-lined eyes and a teasing glimpse of gap-toothed front teeth visible between parted, pouty lips. The French-style striped jersey she wears on the cover accentuates the comparison, as does the photo of Minogue leaning against a Kawasaki that recalls the poster of Bardot in thigh-high boots straddling a Harley.
Aping the look of the greatest sex symbol who ever lived is a smart move. The poutiness and the self-involved playfulness of Bardot aren't equaled by "Body Language" (no one has ever equaled Bardot), but they are echoed. Minogue may play a kitten in the thrall of sex here, but there's always a sense that she's going to pick up her tresses and go home the way a kid will collect her toys after a playground dispute. "I'm going home/ I want my records back," she sings in "Someday," and you can't help feeling there's some honesty in not selling this as the symbol of liberation the lyrics imply but as a celebration of the horny petulance it is. That ties right into the ephemeral pleasures of this sort of pop music. It may not be grown-up music, but it's a lot more fun than Norah Jones' "Music to Eat Brie By," or whatever the hell her album is called.
The best track on "Body Language" is the first. "Slow" is stripped-down, dance-floor music and beguilingly strange. It doesn't provoke the "what the hell is this?" reaction that Kelis' great "Milkshake" does (another example of playground sexiness), but it is the kind of record whose quirks stick out on the first listening and then become the very thing you play it again and again to hear. Over a beat that never seems to escalate but remains steady, like a pot of coffee kept percolating at an exact temperature, Minogue does her best teasing yet. The chorus -- "slow down and dance with me/ yeah/ slow/ skip the beat and move with my body/ yeah/ slow" -- is broken up into breathy, insinuating little exhortations that work their way right into your brain and your body. The fun of the song is the way it doesn't pay off, the way it remains at the same level, the way Minogue keeps drawing you in with a sensual promise only to delay satisfaction again and again. She may have pioneered a new genre here -- tantric dance pop.
Comments:
Post a Comment
