By Gillian Middleton.
All You Need Is Now, the 13th album from Duran Duran, is good. It’s good enough to make one forget that albums like the woeful Pop-Trash and the collaboration with Timbaland (ba-land being a good way to describe it) ever happened. However, despite the excess of clangers over the last few years, Duran Duran have never lost the knack of making superb pop. It seems what was needed was merely a jolt in the right direction. Pairing the group with Mark Ronson, a self-confessed Duranie, was inspired. The arrival of All You Need Is Now, a Rio II of sorts, could not have been better timed. The style which LeBon and company pioneered has become trendy in recent times again; so much so that walking down the high street can often have one expecting that a Duran Duran flash-mob could start at any second. Luckily for them, it is a masterclass in power-pop.
All You Need Is Now is the return of everything that made songs like Girls on Film, Reflex and Notorious awesome. It’s full of cascading synths, funky riffs and those irrepressible Duranish harmonies. The lyrical content is pretty much all stuff that they have covered before: girls, girls and more girls. Yet, despite the occasional indulgent foray into dodgy instrumental territory, the album remains both fresh and familiar. Notable highlights include the extremely catchy Other People’s Lives and the Blondie-esque Being Followed. Girl Panic! and lead single All You Need is Now are classic Duran Duran. The obligatory ballads are present but they rarely become dreary (with the exception of Before the Rain). Safe features a noteworthy guest appearance by none other than Kelis while Blame the Machines is attended to by the Scissors Sisters’ Ana Matronic.
This album marks a renaissance for the band which is comparable to that which Take That have done in recent years. They have striven to become contemporarily relevant without forsaking their strengths. All You Need Is Now is undoubtedly a Duran Duran record but it is one which sits comfortably with 2011. It doesn’t try too hard to be current in the way that Red Carpet Massacre did. Whereas Timbaland tried to mould them to his sound Ronson has fit himself to theirs. The result is a thoroughly enjoyable return to form by the masters of crafting punchy singles.
