KYLIE MINOGUE
Qudos Bank Arena, March 3
AS MUCH OF A REIGNING monarch of pop as she is, as jampacked as this concert undoubtedly was with gems of pleasure, and as similarly impervious to ageing as she remains, it’s not often that Kylie Minogue and Burt Bacharach appear in the same thought. It probably seemed even more unlikely in the opening minutes, as a seated Minogue was elevated from beneath the stage to hang, suspended within an inverted cone of laser lights, on a swing high above dancers who looked like space age Pharisees (Kylie Christ Superstar?). Burt never did that on his piano stool baby!
Yet, well before the end of her two-hour/28 song concert, the final one of the Australian leg of her Tension tour, this unlikely pairing was pinging about my head.
You see, years back I asked Bacharach about the heavy use of medleys in his concerts, something which frustrated me as I wanted to hear these great songs in full. After all, they were usually not much more than three minutes and each second counted in his meticulous writing and arrangements, so were the savings worth it when reducing song after song to a verse or two and a chorus across a full concert?
Sure, he said, I hear you, but imagine the grumbling if he left out whole songs, ones that someone or other (say, me) were certain had to be included because they defined him/pleased us. At least this way more people got some satisfaction, he posited.
Yeah … I guess … and a long career or a deep catalogue makes this decision inevitable, but still …
Which brings us to Ms Minogue, a woman who, as she reminded us mid-show when introducing The Loco-Motion (performed in a manner surprisingly faithful to its 1987 cheap and cheerful version) has been doing this for a good long time. Certainly long enough to have sufficient in-demand songs to fill a couple of concerts.
Minogue’s solution isn’t as brutal as Bacharach’s – thankfully there was only one obvious medley section, as she segued from the B stage back to the main mid-show, and she might well argue that was more of a mashup anyway – but that solution didn’t go by unnoticed. Quite a few songs from what you might call her classic period (beginning with In Your Eyes, two numbers in) were offered in shortened versions, cut off around the three-minute mark.
At the start this was a reasonable trade-off because Lights Camera Action, In Your Eyes, Get Outta My Way and What Do I Have To Do? made for a breathless mix for your fantasy dance party. Indeed, the climax of What Do I Have To Do? pumped adrenaline in us like some triple vitamin B shot in the arse of a 1970s rocker. But trimming Shocked? On A Night Like This? Especially when the likes of Good As Gone, from last year’s Tension album (here very clearly an ordinary song from an ordinary record), appeared in full. A song whose secondary status was only emphasised immediately by the far superior Spinning Around, even in its over-busy/bottom heavy current arrangement.
While Things We Do For Love is so ‘80s film soundtrack fare that the dance moves (only Kylie and singers in action this time) come straight from Footloose and a touch of Flashdance, other Tension songs like Hold On To Now reinforced the feeling they are so professionally Minogue their efficiency can be admired, but so devoid of real Kylieness they can’t really be loved – a bit like Bacharach in the 1980s you might say – and could have done with shortening.
The appearance of Edge Of Saturday Night, 2024’s harder-edged non-album single with The Blessed Madonna pointed the way to a better direction. So did even the newest song of the set, last month’s single, Last Night I Dreamt I Fell In Love, which has a nominal Brazilian connection and a modest presence. Sure, you could argue Better The Devil You Know is at least as much Brazilian - in carnival spirit if not exactly rhythmic base – and Shocked wears its amusement better still, helped by dancers enveloped in bright costumes like compressed versions of those wavy arm blowup dolls you see outside car yards, but Last Night… felt less contrived than anything from Tension.
(That surprisingly the set list contained not a single track from Golden, if not the best then certainly in the top three Minogue albums for at least one of us in the room, could divert me for another half-hour of discussion/rant. That unsurprisingly we got Padam Padam, if not the worst song she’s released then certainly in the top three for probably only one of us in the room, could do the same. But I’ll spare you.)
Those bright costumes notwithstanding, this tour featured a lot less of the bells and whistles than some of her biggest events, like Showgirl or Aphrodite: Les Folies: the stage regularly bare, the screens pretty much close-ups of the main attraction, and costumes and costume changes modest, relatively speaking. In fact, for one section the dancers were absent and grey-clad Minogue, her singers and band were arranged in a single line across the stage while Confide In Me pushed Goth Kylie with a bit of dramtic flourish, even hinting at what she might sound like with The Bad Seeds backing her.
Once, such paring back on production might have undercut a Minogue concert. But a natural (if slightly elevated, more expensive) girl next door charm, a room full of people who have spent four decades on board this locomotive, and a sound set up that was always big but never overwhelming, meant that, all she really needed was the songs. As Burt always knew.
READ MORE
Comments