2001 brought great news for Duran Duran's millions of fans worldwide. That Summer, it was announced that the band's original lineup had reconvened, and were tentatively working on material for a new album. Duran Duran has been my favorite band for a long time, and this announcement was met with great anticipation on my part. I have always believed that Duran Duran was still capable of greatness, but their sustained success was hampered by poor decisions and inconsistent material. The band's self-titled 1993 album was their first excellent album front-to-back since 1986's Notorious, containing two Top Ten singles. However, instead of capitalizing on that success, the band followed it up with a cover album, which was ignored by the critics as well as their own fans. 1997's Medazzaland contained a killer single in Electric Barbarella, but the remainder of the album was mediocre. In 2000, the group released Pop Trash, an album with consistently good songwriting but not even one great single. Now, the wait is nearly over - the upcoming album Astronaut will be the first recording by Duran Duran's original lineup since 1985, and their first full album since 1983. Twenty years ago, Duran Duran was the best pop band in the world. With Astronaut, they look to reclaim that throne. Can Duran Duran deliver?
I've often said that all Duran Duran has to do in order to once again be a force in pop music is be Duran Duran. They have shown flashes of brilliance from Notorious (1986) to Pop Trash (2000), but not since the original lineup's final album (1983's Seven and the Ragged Tiger) have they been able to sustain that brilliance across an entire record. Simon LeBon and Nick Rhodes may be the creative center of the band, but one cannot deny that something was lost when the unrelated Taylors, Roger, Andy, and later John, left the group. Given an opportunity to make an enormous comeback and retake the pop charts by storm, the boys from Birmingham come off sounding like they are doing their best Duran Duran imitation.
In fact, I think that if you had a really good Duran Duran tribute band that decided to write original material and make it big on the pop charts, the result would be an awful lot like Astronaut. The music has sexuality and attitude when it needs to be edgy. The choruses build and swell when they need to be dramatic. The instruments are filled with crisp, Pro Tooled effects when they need to be contemporary and cutting edge. But overall, the total is much less than the sum of its parts.
The record sounds amazing. Duran Duran's edgy rock-meets-punk-meets-disco-meets-Bowie sound was dramatic twenty years ago, but it might be even more welcome now that practically no dance music is played by actual bands with actual instruments. The band hasn't sounded this contemporary since their 1993 self-titled album, and Astronaut actually comes off sounding like a mix of that record and their 1981 debut, also self-titled. This is most evident on the driving dance-rock track Want You More!. The song feels a bit like a modernization of their Rio-era hit Hold Back the Rain. Although it doesn't quite have "pop smash" written all over it, this is the only point on the album where the band's hard-driving dance sound really has a chance to gel with some equally good songwriting.
Think about the elements that make up the classic Duran Duran sound. Duran Duran is atmospheric synthesizers, hard rock power chords (and the occasional screaming solo), and one of the best rhythm sections in all of pop music. Roger Taylor's drumming was frenetic but always on-point, and John Taylor's bass was at the forefront, often playing the only melodic instrumental line while Nick Rhodes and Andy Taylor vamped on chords. Every band member is prominently featured in the mix on Astronaut, except for John Taylor. His bass work was a key element of Duran Duran's early sound, but he is inexplicably buried in the mix throughout most of the album.
I haven't mentioned the most important element of Duran Duran's sound yet - it's the reason why the band continued to score pop hits even when only two of the original five members remained. I'm referring to Simon LeBon's vocal hooks. You can name just about any well-known Duran Duran song, and chances are that it has a great harmonized vocal hook. Every album from the self-titled debut to Pop Trash has had at least one or two songs with this key element, but on Astronaut almost every attempt at a hook falls flat. The chords are too obvious, the melodies too contrived, and when an element of a song actually shows some promise, LeBon fails to build on it. While I believe that he is the most underrated songwriter of the last twenty years, I place the blame for Astronaut's lackluster material firmly on Simon LeBon's shoulders. The band showed up - oh boy, did they show up. The songs, however, just aren't there. It should be mentioned, however, that LeBon is in his best vocal form in years. His voice only gets better with age, and on this record he puts forth his best performances since 1993's soaring Ordinary World.
As stated earlier in this review, Duran Duran is my favorite band. This being the case, I'm sure that Astronaut will grow on me as I continue to listen to it. I have waited far too long for this band to reunite - I fully intend to coax every last ounce of enjoyment that I can out of this record. Honestly, though, great music shouldn't have to grow on you; especially Duran Duran's brand of it. They have always had a way of making the new sound familiar; although you may have never heard another song quite like Save a Prayer or New Moon on Monday, I doubt that many needed more than one listen to decide that those were great songs. On Astronaut, the only song that didn't seem hook-less or totally contrived was Want You More!, and although I listened to it at least six times when writing this review, it's so unmemorable that I couldn't hum it for you right now. (Reach Up for the) Sunrise is absolutely memorable, but the song goes directly to the four-bar hook, repeats it over and over, and doesn't go anywhere from there. It's like Rio with no soul. Where's the big payoff?
The picture only gets more depressing when you start to look at Astronaut through the lens of the band's previous output. Let's start with Pop Trash. Comparing Want You More! with the best dance track from the earlier album, Mars Meets Venus, I'll take Want You More!. Although Mars has a better melody, the anonymous studio musicians playing on the track have nothing on Duran Duran's classic lineup. The rhythm section positively sizzles on More!. However, the album's best ballad, Still Breathing, doesn't compare with Starting to Remember, the previous album's best. Breathing has all the whimsical swirl of an earlier great such as The Chauffeur, but it never seems to go anywhere after a promising intro. Nothing on Astronaut, however, comes close to Pop Trash's best track - the rampaging Last Day on Earth.
The picture looks even more bleak when you compare Astronaut to Duran Duran's classic material. There is nothing here on the level of the unforgettable single Electric Barbarella, and that's just from a few years ago. You could pick just about any song from before the original lineup's 1985 breakup and it gets worse. The brilliant recent box set Singles 81-85 showcases a band that is raw, hungry, and has more melody in a throwaway B-side like Khanada than in the entirety of Astronaut.
Aside from the instrumental performances on Astronaut, I can speak most glowingly of its production. Duran Duran has never sounded this good. Pop Trash was a small label release with a big studio sound, and even older singles like Electric Barbarella still sounded modern until now. Now it all sounds ancient.
So on this record, you can expect to hear part of what you wanted if you are a fan of Duran Duran. The original lineup is back, and they're playing as well as ever (I'll just have to assume this is true in John Taylor's case, since I can barely hear him). Simon LeBon puts forth his best vocals in ten years. However, a famous producer once said that a hit record is made up of three things: The song, the song, and the song. Astronaut sounds spectacular, but it doesn't matter much because the songs just aren't there.
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