ALBUM OF THE WEEK

Kylie Disco, out now

During the first lockdown, many people suddenly found a new interest, while others lost themselves in something they already loved. Kylie Minogue, it seems, did both at once.

After flirting with country music on her last album, Golden, Kylie is back in the arms of dance-pop. But there’s also a new string to her bow: at 52, she has become a studio boffin.

Her record-company boss, Alistair Norbury of BMG, revealed in May that Kylie was taking lessons on Zoom to master Logic, the recording software. ‘She’s got herself a home studio,’ he told Music Week, ‘and decided… to learn to engineer and record her own vocals.’

Who knows what this will do to the image of the sound engineer, traditionally a taciturn character with more facial hair than social skills.

If there’s one thing we know about Kylie, it’s that she is spirited. She has survived breast cancer and had her unfair share of heartbreak. When you see her on stage, she’s more than a star – she’s a human glitterball, radiating sparkle in all directions.

In the studio she’s more hitand-miss. Her voice is only medium-sized and her music can be generic. These 12 new songs capture the sound of f di disco, with ith it its snappy choruses, slinky basslines and choppy guitars, but they don’t add up to more than the sum of their parts. At one point Kylie mentions I Will Survive, without coming close to its fistclenching fearlessness. Of course, any singer might st struggle to match the disco cla classics, but there are ways of c channelling them. One is to use a sample, as Madonna did on H Hung Up, borrowing the synth synths from Abba. Another is to ma make a cover, as Kylie herse herself once did with Roxy

Music Music’s Love Is The Drug.

If you you’re itching to dance around the kitchen, Disco will do the bus business. If you just want a t track kf for a playlist, I can recommend Miss A Thing.

But the real pleasure will come when Kylie is back where she belongs, in the arenas. She may even be mixing the sound herself.