Kylie Minogue - Golden

The Guardian 60

(BMG)

The “Nashville album” offers artists a chance to work with bulletproof songwriters, foreground their craft, or age gracefully. This is the backdrop to Kylie Minogue’s 14th album, the product of two weeks writing in London (before recording it over there). Yet Kylie opts not for copper-bottomed songcraft, but the unholy intersection of country and EDM: drops beget scratchy fiddle breakdowns, while banjo clucks meet tropical house in a mush of mild euphoria. Even the most traditional track, Stop Me From Falling, is more Lumineers than Loretta.

Kylie’s country pivot is odd: she’s never troubled the States, and Golden’s down-home signifiers won’t fool country radio’s notorious gatekeepers. The only logical explanation seems to be that escaping her comfort zone offers a kind of welcome disassociation to counterbalance the intensely personal lyrics – something that Kylie has spent a career avoiding, the exception being 1997’s Impossible Princess. She experienced a nervous breakdown after splitting from her cheating fiance in 2016, and for once, that emotional devastation penetrates the music. “If I get hurt again, I’ll need a lifetime to repair,” she sings, showing unusual vocal sensitivity as she conveys desire, desperation and cynicism within a few lines.

Related: Kylie Minogue on Swinging Safari: ‘So much of what we were doing was so non-PC'

Pitchfork 54

You’ve heard sophisti-Kylie, disco Kylie, and Kraftwerk Kylie. On her 14th album, she tries on a new costume: Ready or not, here comes country Kylie.