Rated MDNA

This is hugely delayed, but I can't review something till I've actually had a sit down, with a mug of chamomile and a jar of Nutella (always a fat boy at heart) and properly absorbed it. So I did what I refused to do months ago and listen to Madonna's latest effort at remaining young and relevant, MDNA. I won't lie, my hopes weren't high and my expectations were so low you'd mistake them for dog sh*t. Thankfully for Madge's sake, I was a bit more impressed that what you'd now expect.

Hiding those wrinkles Mad?

MDNA is no Ray Of Light nor is it a behemoth masterpiece like Confessions, it is however a distinct sounding pop album with some fun moments and some growers. I reviewed second single 'Girl Gone Wild' a while back and I slammed it. I feel a review retraction/amendment is in order here as after a few more plays the song is actually a catchy little mother f*cker with some pretty immense dance production and a simple but insanely catchy chorus. This is about as gay as Madonna can get, but it's damn fun. It should seem a bit gross that a 50 something year old woman is singing about being a bad girl, but it's surprisingly convincing. 'Gang Bang' brings on a '........' response the first time you hear it but it too is a grower with a hellishly infectious beat. 'Turn Up the Radio', 'Give Me All Your Luvin'' and 'I'm Addicted' are all great pop songs, the first being the third single from the album and the second being the lead and one of the most funs of 2012. The third has some awesome electronic production going on and I'd stamp it as the album's finest track.


Things don't go so well with 'I F*cked Up', 'B-day Song' and 'Best Friend' with Madge's average at best vocals struggling to evoke any sort of emotion in her performance. Songs like these feel a lot like fillers and could actually have been removed and no one would notice. 'Fallin Free' harks back to the gorgeousness of her classic 'Frozen' with some hypnotising orchestral production and wraps things up in stylish form.


My advice to Madonna is: MDNA is not awful. It has some strong pop songs on it that act as saviours for the weaker/awful songs that litter its tracklist. What I'd say ol' Madge is that you take a step back and think about how you can make yourself different again. When Ray Of Light came out it was like nothing else on the pop music scene at the time, hence its popularity with the public and critics alike. An album like that cemented your position as one of Pop's most experimental, interesting and often daring artists, ever. Trying to fit in with the 'it' crowd isn't going to work now, so get back to what you did best, experiment. NO hip hop!


2/5

Rated Girls Gone Wild

Madonna's new single misses the mark set by the infectious 'Gimme All Your Luvin', the first single from her upcoming MDNA album. 'Girls Gone Wild' has the production potential of a dance floor smash but it feels too commercial for a woman who once set standards in the pop music industry and has a history of experimentalism (Ray Of Light). The lyrics are mediocre, bordering on lame, with Madonna as vocally unimpressive as she's ever been, 'Girls just want to have some fun/fire me up like a smokin' gun'. For someone with a back catalogue containing some of the greatest pop songs of the 20th and 21st Centuries, this is a poor effort.

1.5/5

Rated Give Me All Your Luvin'

With her brilliantly, yet controversially (of course), titled album MDMA coming out at the back end of March it was time for Madonna to drop us a new single. As one of music's most loved and probably most influential, female icons, the pressure is always on for auld lady to reinvent her sound. Transgressing the expectations of pop music fans for decades, particularly with the experimental sound of albums like Ray of Light and the retro feel of the immense Confessions, Madonna has never been one to stick to her guns (no pun intended).

New single 'Give Me All Your Luvin' is a gay club filler waiting to happen, with relevant (all be them predictable) cameos from hip-hop tart Nicki Minaj and the brilliantly imaginative M.I.A. It's a step back to pop, but a step forward from the awkward hip-hop inspired moments from Hard Candy. Even if you don't enjoy its cheerleader chants "L.U.V Madonna/Y.O.U U Wanna?" you're going to be hard pushed not to be singing this to yourself for months to come. Catchy little number.

Check out the video below, where Madge is looking damn fine for a 50-something year old woman. In fact, is she hotter now than she ever was before?!

4/5

Rated Raunchaaay.

We were promised a risqué video and we weren’t disappointed. Although the image of RiRi bouncing around on foam willies dressed as a Nun did not transpire from my mind, we do get her rocking a red afro that would make Foxy Cleopatra soil her leopard prints scanties. The third cut from chart dominatrix Loud, S&M, is a seductive dance floor romp, with Rihanna growling her way through 4 minutes 4 seconds of in your face filth.

This is about as camp as Rihanna gets, but with every round of “Na na na na C’Mons” you are drawn that little bit closer to the skin under the latex. It’s the closest we get to meeting the Rihanna of old, only to have a copy of Music of the Sun smashed across our cheek and our hands bound behind us. You’ve got to love this sexed up, “slutty” (her own words!) display, because let’s face it, these days she can do no wrong.

5/5

Rated Capitals.

The first time I heard Capitals I instantly thought of The XX, Beirut and some other, folksier sounding bands/artists. They are, however, not in the slightest bit folksy. Capitals are an electronic-pop outfit that veers just far enough away from mainstream to beam with originality. With Angus Carbarns on vocals and Keir MacCulloch twiddling the knobs, this two-piece is as fitted as a fine Armani suit.  

The tracks that are available on their official Myspace page are quite startling. “Hello World” is a fitting introduction, with its up-tempo, pulsing beat and electronic-dance vibe. It’s on ‘A Specter is Haunting Europe’ that we’re really indulged. Sounding like a new-age Soft Cell production, this is where the duo really glistens. “Where are we? We’re lost at sea, we’ve lost our war, we’ve lost our life...” sings Carbarns, his vocals intensely ‘haunting’. The build up to the first chorus is spine tingling and quite unexpected, as the track bursts into a luminescent electro euphoria (due to MacCulloch’s expertise, no doubt). Other highlights from the band’s catalogue are ‘The Grace’, ‘Walking Life’ and ‘Hands Divided’. ‘Walking Life’ is a dream of a song, with violins playing softly in the background, amidst an array of synths. It has a playful chorus, and at times Carbarns sounds like a less shaky Marcus Mumford. ‘Hands Divided’ begins sounding like an XX album cut, but swiftly maneuvers to being (by this point) an identifiable Capitals record.

With the combined effort of these two, clearly, gifted and aspiring men, there’s no doubt in my mind that they will go far. There’s plenty space for them in the industry right now, what with the orgasm of female vocals that is dominating air time. Maybe Capitals can be the ones to break through this and subsequently take some truly brilliant music across the country.