Kylie’s pure Gold at Arena
KYLIE MINOGUE Manchester Arena, last night
A SPARSE desert. The twang of a guitar and the sound of howling wind. A dozen menacing cowboys stroll out onto the landscape. Then Kylie Minogue, sat atop a pile of battered luggage in floral cowboy boots, rises up on to the stage.
This is actually a much more low-key entrance than we’d been anticipating – which is saying something - but it doesn’t stay low-key for long.
As she springs into Golden, the title track off her latest album, her cowboys are hoedowning and heel-tapping, a glittering golden runway is revealed, and full Kylie is unlocked.
This princess of pop doesn’t hold back from here on. Over the course of two-and-ahalf hours, we’re treated to a back catalogue that spans three decades and goes from the pop-rich days of the early ‘80s through to the country- tinged 2018.
While wardrobe shouldn’t necessarily be a defining factor in a woman’s performance, Kylie’s is superb – she flits from floaty pink chiffon to tough leather to a shimmering golden cocktail dress as she flies through her seven (yes, seven) acts.
She’s small in stature, but massive in presence.
The stage is compact and she keeps her band close to her, lending a surprisingly intimate feel to such a mammoth venue.
A lot of that latest album sneaks in early, and her sugary sweet Australian lilt lends itself well to country music. Stop Me choreography, From Falling, is with a highlight. full linedancing
Then she goes spinning back through the decades quicker than Cher’s face earlier songs like The Loco-motion and Better The Devil You Know make their presence felt through frenetic keyboard playing as Confide she was and in in Kylie her Me, 20s. is as a bouncy song that and surely joyful should James Bond have soundtrack been a contender at some point, for a is so firmly planted in the 90s that we half-expect the young cast of Cold Feet to appear on stage, but it’s the early 2000s that are the crowning glory. Can’t Get You Out of My Head, On a Night Like This, and I Believe In You are all given the big band treatment. Kids becomes an allgirl affair in the absence of Robbie Williams and it’s fiesty and glorious fun, but she holds her own for hers and Jason Donovan’s love song classic Especially For You. She closes out act number six with a huge Studio Spinning across the 54-inspired Around, audience. firing performance gold ribbons of another Neatly Golden bookmarking track, she the skips show away with to Dancing, and by the seems rapturous genuinely applause overwhelmed she’s showered with. We’ve travelled back and forth through the decades and while the result is a bit of a patchwork, with a confusing narrative from her dancers (are they... drunk? Lost? Why are there cowboy hats and bucket hats and Polaroid cameras on the same stage at the same time?), the mood is jubilant, and Kylie is the one consistent – timeless, ageless perfection throughout.
She’s small in stature, but massive in presence. The princess of pop doesn’t hold back Daisy Jackson