Artist: Duran Duran
Label: Tapemodern
Release: 2011
Rating: 4/5
Plenty of people know Duran Duran. Especially those of us who spent our milk-teeth years soaking up the eighties hits like Girls On Film, Hungry Like A Wolf, Save A Prayer, The Reflex, Union Of The Snake, Wild Boys,… It’s also well known that the records after the band’s reunion in the second half of the eighties, i.e. in the post-Arcadia/Power Station era, swung wildly in quality. Mostly because the band was used to commercial success, which these days has long stopped depending purely on the quality of an artist’s musicianship.
Anyway, after “Notorious” Duran Duran only ever put out a successful album when they flirted with the classic sound, the one that still carried echoes of the second “new wave boom” of the eighties they once led. That’s how “Duran Duran” (1993), known as “The Wedding Album”, got them through the nineties, and they sailed through the first decade of the new millennium with the hugely successful return to the classic sound on “Astronaut” (2004). What followed was only a pale shadow of “Astronaut”. In the period after its release the guys already had material ready for a new album, but Andy Taylor unexpectedly left, and the band was forced to literally “wipe” the new material that had been written with Andy Taylor and come up with completely new songs. They turned to Justin Timberlake (yes, you read that right), which got them a less successful and less expressive record, “Red Carpet Massacre” (2007).
Evidently that woke the guys up, and they looked back once more to their golden eighties. Even without Andy Taylor in the band, “All You Need Is Now” proves that Duran Duran can still sound damn close to their trademark sound. In some songs it’s not hard to draw parallels, in the use of retro synth sounds as well as the guitar accompaniment (the guitar phrases used), with songs from the first three Duran Duran albums. Given some of the trivially solvable lead motifs on the new album, which immediately evoke the first half of the eighties, it’s fair to ask how much of this is a genuine desire to swing back to retro nostalgia and how much is simply a desire to sell as many copies as possible. The album came out in December 2010 via iTunes (a paid digital “long-haul download” format) and is already racking up great chart positions around the world, which suggests at the very least that repeating the success of “Astronaut” is already in the bag.
The opening title track doesn’t hint at what the previous paragraph describes for its first 50 seconds, but then it all unexpectedly morphs into a chorus whose guitar phrase and rhythm pull you straight toward New Moon On Monday.
On this retro new wave record, Duran Duran take a holistic approach, looking for the right balance in stacking the individual building blocks that together shape a rich yet “polished” sound. It’s mostly about the interplay of keyboards and guitar, while Le Bon’s vocals are, as expected, placed in the dominant spot in the production, and the whole album is built on a strong dance-rhythmic foundation. Some of the rhythms are deliberately woven with transitions that even revive moments of the 1981 debut. Of course, the new album isn’t “Rio II”, but we can more easily call it “Astronaut II”. Still, its flirtation with the legacy of the first half of the eighties is far more direct than what “Astronaut” delivered. The production clearly highlights John Taylor’s melodic and hugely active bass line, which, in places where the guitar is limited to soothingly picking away in the background, combined with the retro-sounding keyboards, directly evokes a flirtation with new wave, the intelligent upgrade of seventies punk, which you could even label ”synth art punk pop”. The album carries on in that vein through Blame the Machine and even more obviously through Being Followed. The latter works under a punk veil, with verses like a “modern-day” Planet Earth.
The guitar is patched up well enough. Throughout the album it keeps flirting with what Andy Taylor brought to the band, though the gap left by the simple fact that Andy isn’t in the band will never be fully filled. Here the new Duran Duran remain partly handicapped when it comes to expressing retro nostalgia in the new millennium. And that raises the question of whether that’s even the whole point of the new album.
The calmly dreamy Leave A Light On invites comparisons with Save A Prayer and is already on the shortlist for a new hit candidate. Naturally, all the fans of the hit Come Undone will latch onto a track like this too. It’s a perfectly polished, compact verse-chorus combo that shifts the album’s mood onto new tracks. The turn toward seventies dance-disco rhythms and the use of “funky” guitar comes with Safe, which feels like a lost track from the “Astronaut” album, especially in the harmonies of the coquettish female backing vocals. Girl Panic doesn’t evoke Girls On Film just through its title, the very skeleton of the song is built on the rails of that hit. The rhythm line especially can’t hide it.
The Man Who Stole A Leopard follows the legacy of deliberately illogical song titles, which comes from the band’s recognizable cementing of their eighties image, and the opening verse, in its use of keyboards, even recalls The Chauffer. If Nick Rhodes looked back to any past Duran Duran record in his synth work, it was definitely “Rio” (1982). The tasteful incorporation of string sounds evokes the “night version” mixes of songs like Planet Earth or My Own Way. And finally, there’s a song that borrows straight from Rio and Hungry Like A Wolf in its rhythms and synth use. I’m talking about Runaway Runaway. Whatever remarks about similarities you might make, Duran Duran defy them across the album by successfully weaving varied solutions into combinations of the main motifs. Which means the creative freshness and inspiration haven’t evaporated in this new era.
Duran Duran have put out a very good album of retro nostalgia that will delight all fans of their first three studio albums, as well as those of you who like Arcadia’s “So Red The Rose”. Times are new, and “All You Need Is Now” will never put the band back on the pedestal of the glory days, not in terms of inspiration either, but with this album Duran Duran showed where they feel best and most at home. They went down to the roots, to the natural habitat of their birth cradle, and carved their ideas for new motifs into a moment of nostalgia very convincingly, and with full credibility too. Le Bon sings like he did 30 years ago, Rhodes uses sounds from that era, the production of the melodically lively bass guitar is thoroughly “eighties”, and so is the baking-in of the rhythmic, danceable punch from the otherwise fully organic drums. This very solid album is also backed up by the experimental Before The Rain, a song with greater motivic and therefore mood variety, which is a minor surprise given the band’s otherwise trivial, minimalist artistry. This is an album that belongs in the collection of every “retro eighties” nostalgic, and it’s already clear that on the upcoming tour the material will fit more than perfectly alongside the older (classic hit) buddies.
From the get-go, the album guarantees a return to the charts around the world and commercial success. Authentic artistry or not, profit is the priority, secured in advance. That’s why “All You Need Is Now” is first and foremost a very cautious and prudent album, and with it (after “Astronaut”) Duran Duran have once again proven that they’re seasoned old tomcats, who with experience and know-how effortlessly pour out fresh ideas and bake them with the expressive culture of their own artistry from a long-gone era, one they helped enthrone themselves. So “All You Need Is Now” earns every bit of credibility!
Lineup
Simon Le Bon – vocals
John Taylor – bass guitar
Nick Rhodes – keyboards
Roger Taylor – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Dominic Brown – guitar
Nina Hossain – vocals (tracks 2, 7)
Anna Ross – backing vocals (track 3)
Jamie Walton – cello (tracks 3, 9)
Mark Ronson – guitar (track 4)
Ana Matronic – vocals (track 5)
Tawiah – backing vocals (track 5)
Kelis – vocals (track 7)
Owen Pallett – string arrangements, conducting (track 7)
The St. Kitts String Octet – strings (track 7)
Production
Mark Ronson
Tracklist
1. All You Need Is Now (4:46)
2. Blame the Machines
 (4:06)
3. Being Followed
 (3:47)
4. Leave a Light On
 (4:36)
5. Safe (In the Heat of the Moment) (featuring Ana Matronic) (3:59)
6. Girl Panic!
(4:31)
7. The Man Who Stole a Leopard (featuring Kelis) (6:13)
8. Runway Runaway
(3:04)
9. Before the Rain (4:12)
