A star in the floor of a Melbourne venue is not enough recognition for the reigning monarch of Australian music. (And long may she rule over us, not least because if she stopped it might mean Tina “I’m big in France you know, and they don’t care that I’m a raging covid-era loon” Arena might stake a claim. FMD!)
No, what Kylie Minogue needs to set off very nicely her current Australian tour (you going? I’m off to it on Monday. Cheers.) is another visit to Wind Back Wednesday, Oh yes.
This time the time machine stops in 2006. Post-cancer. Pre-icecapades. Half-moving. Full follies. All stops to pop-ville.
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KYLIE MINOGUE
Entertainment Centre, November 11, 2006
IN POP MUSIC, AS IN SPORT, sometimes it's best not to think too much. Over think your approach to the next ball, the next pass and you can lose momentum. Over think your brilliantly designed burst of entertaining flash and trash and you can do the same thing.
According to the press notes, Minogue's Showgirl Homecoming concert is a constantly shifting tableaux taking us from "the dawn of time, the beginning of all beginnings" to a Cybermen-ruled future, with flesh revealing stops between them.
None of this is immediately apparent as Minogue first ascends from beneath the stage, regally taking the rapturous applause. She somehow looks dignified in a Galliano corset and feathers costume which is only topped for Folies Bergere-on-steroids style by the even more flamboyant feathers-and-flesh outfits worn by her dancers.
While La Minogue sashays - there will be little dancing, and certainly no vigorous moves tonight from the in-recovery star - the energy is provided by the eminently danceable pop baubles Better The Devil You Know, In Your Eyes and On A Night Like This. When, after a brief pause for a costume change, the scene changes to a late '80s nightclub the high energy groove and flashy look is maintained by Shocked, What Do I Have To Do? and Spinning Around.
It is a brilliant start to the night, filled with the camp disco queen elements which are the best moments of Minogue's career, now given a very expensive upgrade. Everyone is thinking, if the whole show is like this, tomorrow we change our names to Brett and wear satin.
However, things grind to a halt with an over-conceptualised double act, one a sort of African/sort of Asian theme (her Kabbalah moment?), the other a gay bathhouse/gym. They're both apparently meant to present the darker emotions in Minogue's music and life but since emotion has never been something she's seriously attempted, this translates as dull quasi art-disco songs such as Confide In Me and Slow and a momentum shift which can't be fully recovered before the interval, even by the out of context but gratefully received Kids.
The second half of the show features a similar, though not as dramatic, battle between Minogue's heartland high camp fun and the unfamiliar territory of attempted deep thinking. When it works - Hand On Your Heart, Locomotion done à la Peggy Lee's Fever, and the ubiquitous I Should Be So Lucky - it's pure fun. When it doesn't - a Madonna homage, the truly awful Especially For You and the confused imagery for, and musical flat feet of, Chocolate - energy ebbs away.
Like a Greg Inglis run through the defence or a Lido show, Kylie Minogue is at her best when she, and we, aren't thinking but merely bodies in motion.
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Kylie Minogue plays Brisbane Entertainment Centre, February 26-27
Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney, March 1-3
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