Kylie low on ideas for new album

Kylie Minogue at Vector Arena, December 2008. Photo / Norrie Montgomery

Inscribed as one of the 10 Commandments of the Music Business is a line declaring 'Thou Shalt Not Dethrone Kylie, Princess Of Pop'.

The ruling is starting to wear a little thin, the outline of the words beginning to fade as the ageing tablet slowly crumbles.

And while new album Aphrodite won't signal the end of the 42-year-old Australian singer's reign, a rethink of ideas will be required on any future outing to prevent a complete collapse.

If successful formulas are to be followed then the hiring of producer Stuart Price, who injected some glitterball zing into Madonna's 2005 album Confessions On A Dance Floor, is entirely understandable.

The problem is that within the space of five years Price's electro-by-numbers technique itself is starting to sound rusty, while its superclub throb often dwarves Minogue's whispery vocals to leave the record awkwardly anonymous.

None of that would matter if the Melbourne superstar could find another Can't Get You Out Of My Head or a Spinning Around but few songs come close to those classic cuts of hot-pant pop perfection.

Opener All The Lovers and final track Can't Beat The Feeling are the strongest of the bunch, reviving the celebratory zeal of 2003`s Body language, but bookending the record in such a way only highlights the impersonation of ideas struggling to find an identity within.

This really should not be the case. A total of 14 producers were drafted in for the Aphrodite project with a staggering 27 writers invited to oil the wheels of the ongoing Minogue locomotion.

Scissor Sisters singer Jake Shears was an obvious choice, his natural chemistry with Minogue clear to see during their recent collaboration at the UK's Glastonbury Festival.

But neither he nor Scottish dance virtuoso Calvin Harris could lift the necessary energy levels on Too Much.

Likewise hiring the chief songwriter behind Keane, described frequently in the British press as "bed wetters", was always unlikely to get the pulse racing and Tim Oxley Smith duly obliges with the blandest of ballad-meets-beats in Everything Is Beautiful.

Wedged between those two low points lies the album's most solid chunk of material but ironically the songs involved merely revive the sound of three of Minogue's more accomplished pop predecessors.

While the album's upbeat title track Aphrodite invokes the abandon and attitude so missing elsewhere, it's a chorus that would have been tailor made for Michael Jackson to whoop and storm his way through.

Illusion boasts bleepy lush melodies and sweeping strings but vocally it's a predictable throwback to mid-90s Madonna.

And while Better Than Today sees a return to Minogue's joyously cheesy pop roots, its funky bass line could only reawaken The Bee Gees' Jive Talkin' more obviously if it were wearing three pairs of sunglasses and matching flares.

Throughout Aphrodite, Minogue sings about little of real substance bar the usual touching, feeling, moving dance cliches but then she never was a classical lyricist.

More concerning is the lack of interest. Songs start and finish out of nowhere as if they are rough cuts waiting to be retouched and the sense of warmth and connection found on previous records has gone walking into a drizzly maze.

Minogue no longer feels like she really cares all that much.

Of course there are some impressive pop moments and no doubt hordes more remixes are waiting in the wings to ensure her worshipped voice remains in the speakers of clubland for months to come.

The album has already hit number one in the UK and two in Australia, as is decreed by her status as 'international treasure'.

But you definitely will be able to get Aphrodite out of your head and when Kylie's career is reviewed it will blur like a drunken night dancing into the 10 better albums which came headily before.

-AAP