Coming hot on the heels of about a month of my life spent listening almost exclusively to Duran Duran's greatest hits, this album has "disappointment" written all over it. Having, like most of the world, successfully and without the necessity of much effort avoided almost everything they've produced since "Ordinary World" (the unbelievably, magnificently smug and saucy "Electric Barbarella" aside), the all-star reunion of Simon LeBon and Nick Rhodes with the various Taylors who comprised the classic eighties line-up formed a viciously effective tag-team with the currently all-consuming hipness of all things synth-pop and the general dearth of anything worth buying in the months leading up to the annual Christmas ballad shitstorm and I succumbed to temptation.

The warning signs are there in titles like "(Reach Up For The) Sunrise" (Nooooo! The) brackets (have) got me!!!!(!!!!) and "Taste The Summer". They're middle-aged and, you know, really fucking happy to be here. Oh, and they can't write songs any more. Look for the good points. Go on, try. "Want You More" is okay, and if you're not listening carefully, maybe driving in your car or something, the title track doesn't sound like total shit. Elsewhere however, "Bedroom Toys" is totally stupid, and would be admirably shameless if they didn't all clearly think they were being so fucking witty. "Point Of No Return" drags on for what seems like weeks and has no points of merit whatsoever and "Still Breathing" sucks big logs. I daresay those folks unfortunate enough to have experienced the doubtlessly turgid depths of Duran Duran's other post-eighties adventures will hail this as "not as bad as 'Pop Trash'" or somesuch, but for the rest of us, we have The Killers or The Faint or, for that matter, Duran Duran's Greatest Hits, or even better, Duran Duran's Greatest Hits DVD, to turn to for such fizzy, sexy, synth-based thrills. -Ian Martin, Nov.28.04.

Astronaut