Duran Duran - DANSE MACABRE

 

Has anybody checked out the latest Duran Duran record? It's called DANSE MACABRE. For some reason that's in capitals. I imagine articles are seriously being posted somewhere debating whether it's a 'return to form' or not. I won't detain you with that discussion. Well perhaps I will. It's not. 

Anyway. I've just listened to it. All the way through. So you don't have to. All fifty minutes of it. Not because I was expecting to gasp, 'Oh Double D, They've proved me wrong. Simon is a poet and John, Nick and Roger have still got it. I must go back and investigate those early records again.' I listened to it just to see what I thought really. I had some time to kill.

 I've never cared for Duran Duran. Why would I. They don't align with me and who I am and they never realy have or will. I realise I might be coming across as snotty and judgmental here. They were like the really outgoing and attractive and self-confident guy in the class you never got to know and who never gave the slightest indication that they wanted to know you either.

In 1982, when I first started paying attention to these things, I was drawn in by Echo & the Bunnymen and Simple Minds and not Simon and the Taylor's pouts, My younger sister liked them. 

They just weren't there for me. They were interested in James Bond and Cosmopolitan, I was interested in Kafka, Camus and going to Eastern Europe. The only reason they'd have gone to Eastern Europe would have been to scoff caviar and champagne in party hotels, bed the pretty KGB agent and save the day in some crappy video featuring them all in a preposterous scenario that took someone twenty minutes to put together. 

Anyhow they soon moved on to aspiration, suits and yachts, glossy models and the like. They had some decent singles, they were not untalented. Sometimes they we're very good. Listen to Hungry Like The Wolf, Save a Prayer and The Chauffeur for evidence. But I wasn't really interested in clothes horses, found their interview patter pretty vacuous, sensed they were at heart Tories and went to their source, Roxy Music instead.to further my musical education, I was never tempted to buy a record at any point.

From Rio I stopped listening to their music apart from singles you couldn't really help but hear whether you wanted to hear them or not. If you wanted to have a conversation based on whether Duran Duran were any good you really woudn't need to listen to any record apart from Rio. Everything they've done since has pretty much been a variation on their first two albums. 

DANSE MACABRE, (and I'm sorry I can't see the point of the capitals, it's just a cry for attention), sounds more like a list of tracks than a coherent statement. An album. It sounds like it's been assembled from Duran Duran spare parts. Almost all of them dating back to their earlest days - 1980 to 1983.

There are some ludicrous lyrics; LOVE VOUDOU stands out. 'When I first met you on the roof. You caught me in your web of youth. But now I know the wicked truth..It's much too late for fighting.' I imagine these are sentiments we can all empathise with.

Duran Duran, more than anything are a glossy photo shoot. Girls on Film. They're about making the initial flirtation you had with that sexy girl who was actually interested, last a lifetime. They still look very good. They know their job.

Listening through to the whole of the record became a bit of a chore though, They're not actually trying very hard. But then I won't be listening to new Bunnymen or Simple Minds records if and when they come out either. In the final analysis it's a Duran Duran record. They're in their Sixties now but they're not letting on. Good luck to them.

* Oh and they finish off with atrocious covers of The Specials Ghost Town The Stones Paint it Black and several more which are utterly devoid of style, grace or dignity. Performed and recorded for  reasons known only to themselves. Not with any evident regard or respect for te originals anyhow. Here they become like your dad. Dancing at a wedding reception. They're a band that should stop doing cover versions. They've never been good at it,