Album Review: Cowgirl Kylie walks a country mile with Golden

REVIEW

Kylie Minogue — Golden

(BMG) ★★★★✩

KYLIE has decided it’s time she channel her inner cowgirl, 30 years and 14 albums down. Recorded mainly in Nashville, after Minogue’s split from her former fiancé Joshua Sasse, Golden is synth-pop meets country — and the ‘Dolly Parton on the dancefloor’ vibe is perfectly suited to the resilient princess of pop, who has always been a dab hand at reinvention.

Golden’s sound is subtle rather than try-hard or overblown, and, in contrast to her massive pop hits, there’s also an intimate authenticity to its songs — she co-wrote every song here, something she has not done since the 1997 album Impossible Princess.

Title track Golden mixes slinky spaghetti western with Balearic club pop, building towards a massive, melodic chorus. A Lifetime To Repair, featuring honest lyrics about being ‘broken-hearted way too soon’, rollicks along with a fast-paced, bittersweet lick. Sincerely Yours is an addictive sugar rush with a slick belter of a pop chorus.

Shelby ’68 mixes swoony Americana pop and a dreamy narrative about the appeal of bad boys — ‘know you’re gonna break my heart/when I get in your car’ — in a way that recalls moments from Lana Del Rey and Taylor Swift. Live A Little is a snappy, happy ode to moving on and moving up, while Raining Glitter is a disco-country thumper about the glorious, redemptive power of the dance-floor.

While Golden tracks are not likely to dominate the charts, there is plenty of cute, classy and unusually personal pop for fans to love. Kylie Minogue in 2018 — less impossible princess, more indomitable cowgirl.

Author: Amy Dawson